WORK   AND    PLAY; 


OR 


LITERARY    VARIETIES 


Library. 


HORACE    BUSHNELL. 


NEW    YORK: 
CHARLES    SCRIBNER,    124    GRAND    ST. 

1864. 


ENTERED  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1864, 

BY  CHARLES  SCRIBNER, 
In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  Southern  District  of  New  York. 


JOHN  F.  TROTT, 
1INTER,  BTEREOTYPER,  AND  ELECTROTYPER, 

48  &  50  Greene  Street, 
New  York. 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


AT  the  suggestion  of  a  friend,  who  is  himself  an  author,  I 
have  named  this  volume  from  its  first  article ;  partly  because 
it  must  have  a  name,  and  partly  because  the  matter  of  it  rep 
resents  the  spontaneous  overplus  and  literary  by-play  of  a  la 
borious  profession. 

A  good  many  of  the  articles  it  contains  have  been  pub 
lished  before  in  the  pamphlet  form  ;  and  the  frequent  letters 
I  receive,  requesting  copies,  when  they  are  no  longer  to  be 
had,  have  suggested,  in  fact,  this  republication  of  them  in  a 
more  permanent  shape.  It  will  not  be  amiss  that  articles  are 
inserted,  which  have  not  before  been  published. 

As  the  contributions  of  the  volume  represent  opinions  and 
impressions  that  belong  to  dates,  or  periods  of  life,  widely 
separated,  no  exact  consistency  of  view  will  be  expected  or 
demanded. 

In  the  article  on  "  The  Growth  of  Law,"  a  reflection  more 
severe  by  implication  than  by  statement,  is  cast  upon  those 
reformers  who  have  it  for  a  point  of  endeavor,  to  show  that 
slavery  was  not  permitted  in  the  ancient  Scriptures.  I  con 
fess  that  my  impressions  are  somewhat  modified  by  the  late 
argument  of  my  friend  Dr.  J.  P.  Thompson.  At  the  same 

1* 


VI  ADVERTISEMENT. 

time,  I  do  not  see  that  any  thing  really  decisive  is  depending 
on  that  question.  Doubtless  it  is  all  the  better  if  slavery  can 
get  no  complexion  of  favor  from  the  Scripture  usage,  yet  still 
it  is  quite  well  even  if  it  can.  If  there  is,  by  God's  appoint 
ment,  and  is  always  to  be,  a  progress  in  law,  nothing  more  is 
wanted  for  its  final  condemnation,  than  to  show  that  the  day 
of  it  is  now  gone  by,  and  a  state  is  reached,  in  which  the 
world  is  capable  of  better  things.  And  if  it  can  be  shown 
that  Christianity  itself  expects,  and  deliberately  prepares,  just 
this  kind  of  advancement  in  the  social  capability  of  mankind, 
slavery  is  then  just  as  truly  ruled  out  by  the  Scripture,  as  if 
it  were  specifically  condemned.  The  ground  which  I  took  in 
this  article,  twenty  years  ago,  coincides  exactly,  it  will  be 
seen,  with  the  very  able,  and  more  strictly  Scriptural,  argu 
ment  of  Prof.  Goldwin  Smith,  just  now  published.  But  if  it 
should  turn  out  that  we  are  all  in  a  mistake  in  our  argu 
ments,  I  think  it  will  be  discovered,  ere  long,  that  God  has  a 
way  of  uprooting  slavery  that  is  Providentially  right. 

H.  B. 


CONTENTS. 


Page. 

ADVERTISEMENT, 5 

CONTENTS, ^ 

I.— Work  and  Play, 9 

II.— The  True  Wealth  or  Weal  of  Nations. 43 

III.— The  Growth  of  Law, 18 

IY. — The  Founders  Great  in  their  Unconsciousness, 124 

y. — Historical  Estimate  of  Connecticut, 167 

VI.— Agriculture  at  the  East, 227 

VII.— Life,  or  the  Lives, 262 

VIII.— City  Plans, 308 

IX.— The  Doctrine  of  Loyalty, 337 

X.— The  Age  of  Homespun, 368 

XL— The  Day  of  Roads, 403 

XII.— Religious  Music, 440 


I. 

WORK  AND   PLAY.* 


MR.  PRESIDENT,  AND  BRETHREN  OF  THE  SOCIETY, — 

THERE  are  many  subjects  or  truths,  and  sometimes 
those  of  the  greatest  moment,  which  can  not  well  be 
formally  announced.  They  require  to  be  offered  rather 
by  suggestion.  They  will  enter  the  mind  and  be  in  it 
only  as  they  are  of  it,  generated  by  the  fertile  activity 
of  a  meditative  spirit.  This  is  frequently  true  even  in 
matters  of  scientific  discovery,  where  also  it  is 'often 
remarked,  that  the  best  suggestives  are  the  humblest 
instances ;  such  as  the  mind  can  play  itself  upon  with 
the  greatest  facility,  because  it  is  not  occupied  by  their 
magnitude  or  oppressed  by  their  grandeur.  Some 
lamp  is  seen  swinging  on  its  chain,  some  apple  falling 
from  the  tree,  and  then,  perchance,  the  thoughtful 
looker-on,  taking  the  hint  that  nature  gives,  will  be 
able  also  to  look  in ;  thus  to  uncover  truths  not  meas 
ured  by  their  instances, — laws  of  the  universe. 

More  true  is  this,  if  possible,  of  moral  subjects ;  for 
there  are  many  of  these  which  the  soul  will  not  suffer 
to  be  thrust  upon  her.  She  must  ask  for  them,  catch 

*  Delivered  as  an  Oration  before  the  Society  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  in 
the  University  of  Cambridge,  August  24,  1348.  * 


10  WORK    AND    PLAY. 

the  note  of  them  in  some  humble  suggestive,  entertain 
them  thoughtfully,  take  them  into  her  feeling,  and 
there,  encouraging,  as  it  were,  their  modesty,  tempt 
them  to  speak.  So  especially  it  is  with  the  subject  in 
which  I  desire  to  engage  you  on  the  present  occasion. 
No  formal  announcement  will  probably  do  more  for  it, 
than  just  to  thrust  it  on  your  disrespect. 

Let  me  call  to  my  aid,  then,  some  thoughtful  spirit 
in  my  audience ;  not  a  poet,  of  necessity,  or  a  man  of 
genius,  but  a  man  of  large  meditation,  one  who  is  ac 
customed  to  observe,  and,  by  virtue  of  the  warm  affini 
ties  of  a  living  heart,  to  draw  out  the  meanings  that 
are  hid  so  often  in  the  humblest  things.  Returning 
into  the  bosom  of  his  family,  in  some  interval  of  care 
and  labor,  he  shall  come  upon  the  very  unclassic  and 
certainly  unimposing  scene, — his  children  and  a  kitten 
playing  on  the  floor  together;  and  just  there,  possibly, 
shall  meet  him  suggestions  more  fresh,  and  thoughts  of 
higher  reach  concerning  himself  and  his  race,  than  the 
announcement  of  a  new-discovered  planet,  or  the  revo 
lution  of  an  empire  would  incite.  He  surveys,  with  a 
meditative  feeling,  this  beautiful  scene  of  muscular 
play, — the  unconscious  activity,  the  exuberant  life,  the 
spirit  of  glee, — and  there  rises  in  his  heart  the  concep 
tion,  that  possibly  he  is  here  to  see  the  prophecy  or 
symbol  of  another  and  higher  kind  of  play,  which  is 
the  noblest  exercise  and  last  end  of  man  himself. 
Worn  by  the  toils  of  years,  perceiving,  with  a  sigh,  that, 
the  unconscious  joy  of  motion  here  displayed  is  spent 


WORK    AND    PLAY.  11 

in  himself,  and  that  now  he  is  effectually  tamed  to  the 
doom  of  a  working  creature,  he  may  yet  discover,  in 
the  lively  sympathy  with  play  that  bathes  his  inward 
feeling,  that  his  soul  is  playing  now, — enjoying,  with 
out  the  motions,  all  it  could  do  in  them ;  manifold  more 
than  it  could,  if  he  were  down  upon  the  floor  himself, 
in  the  unconscious  activity  and  lively  frolic  of  child 
hood.  Saddened  he  may  be  to  note  how  time  and  work 
have  changed  his  spirit  and  dried  away  the  playful 
springs  of  animal  life  in  his  being ;  yet  he  will  find,  or 
ought,  a  joy  playing  internally  over  the  face  of  his 
working  nature,  which  is  fuller  and  richer  as  it  is  more 
tranquil ;  which  is  to  the  other  as  fulfillment  to  proph 
ecy,  and  is,  in  fact,  the  prophecy  of  a  better  and  far 
more  glorious  fulfillment  still. 

Having  struck,  in  this  manner,  the  great  world-prob 
lem  of  WORK  AND  PLAY,  his  thoughts  kindle  under  the 
theme  and  he  pursues  it.  The  living  races  are  seen,  at 
a  glance,  to  be  offering  in  their  history,  everywhere,  a 
faithful  type  of  his  own.  They  show  him  what  he 
himself  is  doing  and  preparing, — all  that  he  finds  in  the 
manifold  experience  of  his  own  higher  life.  They 
have,  all,  their  gambols,  all,  their  sober  cares  and  la 
bors.  The  lambs  are  sporting  on  the  green  knoll ;  the 
anxious  dams  are  bleating  to  recall  them  to  their  side. 
The  citizen  beaver  is  building  his  house  by  a  laborious 
carpentry ;  the  squirrel  is  lifting  his  sail  to  the  wind  on 
the  swinging  top  of  the  tree.  In  the  music  of  the  morn 
ing,  he  hears  the  birds  playing  with  their  voices,  and, 


12  WORK    AND    PLAY. 

when  the  day  is  up,  sees  them,  sailing  round  in  circles 
on  the  upper  air,  as  skaters  on  a  lake,  folding  their 
wings,  dropping  and  rebounding,  as  if  to  see  what  sport 
they  can  make  of  the  solemn  laws  that  hold  the  upper 
and  lower  worlds  together.  And  yet  these  play-chil 
dren  of  the  air  he  sees  again  descending  to  be  carriers 
and  drudges ;  fluttering  and  screaming  anxiously  about 
their  nest,  and  confessing  by  that  sign  that  not  even 
wings  can  bear  them  clear  of  the  stern  doom  of  work. 
Or  passing  to  some  quiet  shade,  meditating  still  on  this 
careworn  life,  playing  still  internally  with  ideal  fancies 
and  desires  unrealized,  there  returns  upon  him  there,  in 
the  manifold  and  spontaneous  mimicry  of  nature,  a  liv 
ing  show  of  all  that  is  transpiring  in  his  own  bosom; 
in  every  flower,  some  bee  humming  over  his  laborious 
chemistry  and  loading  his  body  with  the  fruits  of  his 
toil ;  in  the  slant  sunbeam,  populous  nations  of  motes 
quivering  with  animated  joy,  and  catching,  as  in  play, 
at  the  golden  particles  of  the  light  with  their  tiny  fin 
gers.  Work  and  play,  in  short,  are  the  universal  ordi 
nance  of  God  for  the  living  races ;  in  which  they  sym 
bolize  the  fortune  and  interpret  the  errand  of  man.  No 
creature  lives  that  must  not  work  and  may  not  play. 

Returning  now  to  himself  and  to  man,  and  meditat 
ing  yet  more  deeply,  as  he  is  thus  prepared  to  do,  on 
work  and  play,  and  play  and  work,  as  blended  in  the 
compound  of  our  human  life ;  asking  again  what  is  work 
and  what  is  play,  what  are  the  relations  of  one  to  the 
other,  and  which  is  the  final  end  of  all,  he  discovers,  in 
what  he  was  observing  round  him,  a  sublimity  of  im- 


WORK    AND     PLAY.  13 

port,  a  solemnity  even,  that  is  deep  as  the  shadow  of 
eternity. 

To  proceed  intelligently  with  our  subject,  we  need, 
first  of  all,  to  resolve  or  set  forth  the  precise  philo 
sophic  distinction  between  work  and  play;  for  upon 
this  distinction  all  our  illustrations  will  depend,  That, 
in  practical  life,  we  have  any  hesitancy  in  making  the 
distinction,  I  by  no  means  intimate.  At  least,  there  are 
many  youths  in  the  universities,  not  specially  advanced 
in  philosophy,  who  are  able  to  make  their  election  with 
the  greatest  facility,  be  the  distinction  itself  clear  or  not. 
But  as  I  propose,  on  the  present  occasion,  to  speak  of 
the  state  of  play  in  a  manner  that  involves  a  philo 
sophic  extension  of  the  idea,  I  am  required  to  distin 
guish  the  idea  by  a  careful  analysis. 

You  will  discover,  at  once,  that  work  and  play,  taken 
as  modes  of  mere  outward,  muscular  activity,  can  not 
be  distinguished.  There  is  motion  in  both,  there  is  an 
exercise  of  force  in  both,  both  are  under  the  will  as  act 
ing  on  the  muscular  system  ;  so  that,  taken  outwardly, 
they  both  fall  into  the  same  category.  Indeed,  they 
can  not  be  discriminated  till  we  pass  within,  to  view 
them  metaphysically,  considering  their  springs  of  ac 
tion,  their  impulse,  aim,  and  object. 
"  Here  the  distinction  becomes  evident  at  once ;  name 
ly,  that  work  is  activity  for  an  end ;  play,  activity  as 
an  end.  One  prepares  the  fund  or  resources  of  enjoy 
ment,  the  other  is  enjoyment  itself.  Thus,  when  a  man 
goes  into  agriculture,  trade,  or  the  shop,  he  consents  to 

2 


WORK    AND    PLAY. 

undergo  a  certain  expenditure  of  care  and  labor,  which 
is  only  a  form  of  painstaking  rightly  named,  in  order  to 
obtain  some  ulterior  good  which  is  to  be  his  reward. 
But  when  the  child  goes  to  his  play,  it  is  no  painstak 
ing,  no  means  to  an  end ;  it  is  itself  rather  both  end  and 
joy.  Accordingly,  it  is  a  part  of  the  distinction  I  state, 
that  work  suffers  a  feeling  of  aversion,  and  play  ex 
cludes  aversion.  For  the  moment  any  play  becomes 
wearisome  or  distasteful,  then  it  is  work;  an  activity 
that  is  kept  up,  not  as  being  its  own  joy,  but  for  some 
ulterior  end,  or  under  some  kind  of  constraint. 

Another  form  of  the  distinction  is  made  out,  and  one 
that  is  more  accurately  adapted  to  philosophic  uses,  by 
saying  that  work  is  done  by  a  conscious  effort  of  will, 
and  that  play  is  impulsive,  having  its  spring  in  some  in 
spiration,  or  some  exuberant  fund  of  life  back  of  the 
will.  So  that  one  is  something  which  we  require  of 
ourselves,  the  other  something  that  we  must  control 
ourselves  not  to  do.  We  work  because  we  must,  be 
cause  prudence  impels.  We  play  because  we  have  in 
\  us  a  fund  of  life  that  wants  to  expend  itself. 

But  man  is  not  a  muscular  creature  only;  he  does 
not  consist  of  mere  bones  and  integuments.  He  is  a 
creature  also  of  thought,  feeling,  intelligence,  and  char 
acter.  And  what  we  see  of  him  in  the  muscular  life 
he  is,  or  should  be,  in  the  higher  domain  of  spirit. 
Regarding  the  child  as  a  creature  full  of  life  and  spon 
taneous  motion,  thus  and  therefore  a  playing  creature, 
we  are  to  see  in  him,  not  the  measure,  but  the  sign,  of 
that  which  shall  be.  For  as  the  race  began  with  an 


WORK    AND    PLAY.  15 

outward  paradise,  which,  being  lost,  may  yet  offer  the 
type  of  a  higher  paradise  to  be  gained,  so  each  life  be 
gins  with  muscular  play,  that,  passing  through  the  hard 
struggles  of  work,  it  may  carry  its  ideal  with  it,  and 
emerge,  at  last,  into  a  state  of  inspired  liberty  and  spon 
taneous  beauty.  ^fn.  short,  we  are  to  conceive  that  the 
highest  and  complete  state  of  man,  that  which  his  na 
ture  endeavors  after  and  in  which  only  it  fulfills  its  sub 
lime  instinct,  is  the  state  of  pla^v.. 

In  this  view,'  study  is  to  be  regarded  as  work,  until 
the  disciple  gets  beyond  voluntary  attention,  application 
constrained  by  prudence,  rivalry,  ambitious  prepara 
tions  for  life,  and  begins  to  dwell  in  beauty  and  truth 
as  inspirations.  For  then  he  passes  into  another  and 
more  perfect  kind  of  activity,  an  activity  that  is  spon 
taneous  or  impulsive,  and  is  to  itself  both  reward  and 
end. 

And  this  kind  of  activity,  call  it  enthusiastic  or  in 
spired,  or  by  whatever  name,  we  shall  discover  is  com 
monly  regarded  as  a  higher  and  nobler — in  fact  the 
only  perfect  activity  conceivable.  In  the  article  of 
memory,  for  example,  we  regard  a  spontaneous  mem 
ory,  that  which  mirrors  all  the  past  before  us  without 
any  effort  of  recollection,  as  the  only  perfect  memory. 
But  a  reflective  memory,  supported  by  mnemonic  con 
trivances,  and  assisted  by  recollective  efforts,  is  so  far  in 
the  nature  of  work ;  and  the  necessity  of  work  argues 
the  imperfection  of  the  instrument.  Our  idea  of  a  per 
fect  or  complete  memory  is,  that  it  reports  the  past 
spontaneously,  or  in  play. 


16  WORK    AND    PLAY. 

When  we  ascend  to  the  higher  modes  of  action,  such 
as  involve  the  inventive  exercises  of  reason,  fancy,  im 
agination,  or  the  sentimental  exercises  of  feeling,  pas 
sion,  humor,  we  find  that  we  are  even  offended  by  the 
signs  of  work ;  or,  if  not  offended,  we  are  unsatisfied, 
just  in  proportion  to  the  evidence  of  work  or  effort  ob 
truded  on  our  attention.  For  work,  we  allow,  argues 
defect  or  insufficiency,  and  to  say  that  the  man  labors  is 
the  same  as  to  say  that  he  fails.  Nothing  is  sufficient 
or  great,  nothing  fires  or  exalts  us,  but  to  feel  the  divine 
energy  and  the  inspiring  liberty  of  play. 

Then,  again,  as  we  ascend  still  higher,  to  modes  of 
activity  that  are  moral  and  religious,  we  become  quite 
intolerant  of  any  thing  in  the  nature  of  work.  To  be 
good  or  true,  for  the  sake  of  some  ulterior  end,  is  the 
same  as  to  value  goodness  and  truth  second  to  that  end; 
which  is  the  same  as  to  have  no  sense  of  either.  So,  if 
some  benefit  or  gift  is  bestowed  upon  us  by  constraint, 
and  not  from  any  compassion  for  our  lot  or  interest  in 
our  welfare,  we  deem  the  gift  itself  an  insult,  and  call 
the  charity  hypocrisy.  In  like  manner  purity,  forced 
by  self-restraint  or  maintained  by  mere  prudence,  argues 
impurity.  True  purity,  that  which  answers  the  perfect 
ideal,  is  spontaneous;  unfolding  its  artless,  unaffected 
spotlessness  in  the  natural  freedom  of  a  flower.  It 
could  not  defile  itself  without  an  effort.  Nay,  it  is  sup- 
posable  that  perfect  purity  could  not  even  blush.  In 
like  manner,  self-denial  is  never  a  complete  virtue  till  it 
becomes  a  kind  of  self-indulgence.  It  must  bathe  itself 
in  the  fountains  of  a  self-oblivious  charity.  Forgetting 


WORK    AND    PLAY.  17 

fame  and  reward,  rising  above  the  constraints  of  pru 
dence,  and  losing  the  nature  of  work,  it  must  become 
the  spontaneous  impulse  of  our  being,  a  joyous  overflow 
of  the  soul's  liberty. 

It  follows,  in  this  view,  that  work  is  in  its  very  na 
ture  temporary,  or  should  be,  having  for  its  end  the 
realization  of  a  state  of  play.  Passing  through  activity 
for  an  end,  we  are  to  come  into  activity  as  an  end ;  be 
yond  which,  of  course,  there  is  nothing  higher.  As  we 
rest  in  the  one,  we  are  to  cease  from  the  other.  And 
might  we  not  have  said  as  much  beforehand?  Who 
that  considers  the  ethereal  nature  of  a  soul  can  conceive 
that  the  doom  of  work  is  any  thing  more  than  a  tempo 
rary  expedient,  introduced  or  suffered  to  perfect'  our 
discipline?  To  imagine  a  human  creature  dragged 
along,  or  dragging  himslf  along,  under  the  perpetual 
friction  of  work,  never  to  ascend  above  it ;  a  creature 
in  God's  image,  aching  for  God's  liberty,  beating  ever 
vainly  and  with  crippled  wings,  that  he  may  lift  him 
self  into  some  freer,  more  congenial  element — this,  I 
say,  were  no  better  than  to  quite  despair  of  man.  Kay, 
it  were  to  confess  that  all  which  is  most  akin  to  God  in 
his  human  instincts  is  only  semblance  without  reality. 
Do  we  not  all  find  within  us  some  dim  ideal,  at  least,  of 
a  state  unrealized,  where  action  is  its  own  impulse; 
where  the  struggles  of  birth  are  over,  and  the  friction 
of  interest  and  care  is  no  longer  felt ;  where  all  that  is 
best  and  highest  is  freest,  and  joyous  because  it  is  free ; 
where  to  be  is  to  be  great,  because  the  inspiration  of  the 
soul  is  full,  and  to  do  is  easy  as  to  conceive ;  where  ac- 

2* 


18  WORK    AND    PLAY. 

tion  is  itself  sublime,  because  it  is  the  play  of  ease  and 
the  equilibrium  of  rest  ? 

Let  no  one  imagine  that  I  derogate  thus  from  the 
dignity  of  work.  Eather  do  I  dignify  it  the  more,  that 
I  represent  it  as  the  preparative  to  a  state  so  exalted. 
Possibly  our  modern  writers,  in  their  zeal  to  dignify 
work,  have  sometimes  excluded  or  omitted  the  notice 
of  this,  which  is  its  only  dignity.  Indeed,  some  of  our 
poets  seem  to  have  worked  harder  to  change  the  world's 
work  into  poetry,  than  the  world  need  have  done  to  fin 
ish  it  in  pros4  Work  is  transitional,  having  its  good 
in  its  end.  The  design  is,  that,  by  a  fixed  law  of  na 
ture;  it  -shull  pass  into  play.  This  is  its  proper  honor 
and  joy. 

Let  us  notice,  then,  for  a  moment,  in  what  manner 
work  becomes  the  preparative  or  necessary  condition  of 
play.  Observe  the  child  as  a  playing  creature  in  the 
muscular  life.  Full  of  animated  glee,  unable  to  contain 
the  brimming  life  that  is  in  him,  he  must  needs  expend 
himself  in  action.  He  leaps  about  the  ground,  climbs 
into  the  trees,  screams  among  his  fellows  in  notes  that 
tingle  on  the  air ;  not  because  he  will,  or  has  any  ulte 
rior  end,  but  because  the  play-fund  is  in  him,  and  he 
must.  But  we  do  not  always  note  that  a  period  of  trial 
answering  to  work  was  necessary  to  prepare  this  liberty 
of  motion ;  that  the  child  had  first  to  practice  eye,  voice, 
ear,  hand,  foot,  putting  forth  carefully  by  little  and  lit 
tle,  and  gradually  getting  possession  of  the  bodily  ma 
chinery  that  now  plays  so  nimbly.  Ever}-  muscle  in 


WORK    AND    PLAY.  19 

his  body  had,  in  fact,  to  be  graduated  in  the  little  uni 
versity  of  motion,  before  he  was  ready  for  play.  He 
had  many  falls  to  suffer,  in  order  to  get  the  balance  of 
his  members ;  much  crying  to  do,  to  get  possession  of 
his  voice ;  and  this,  I  suppose,  must  be  taken  for  work. 
By  the  same  kind  of  necessity  is  mental  and  spiritual 
work  necessary  to  the  play-state  of  the  soul.  The  man 
must  go  into  experiment,  through  experiment  or  study 
get  possession  of  his  soul,  so  that  he  can  turn  every 
faculty  whithersoever  he  will,  and  have  tbe  whole  in 
ternal  machinery  in  the  exactest  play.  I  speak  not 
here  of  the  discipline  merely  of  schools  and  colleges, 
but,  as  much,  of  the  struggles  we  encounter  and  the 
scenes  through  which  we  pass  in  this  great  school  of 
life — its  objects,  relations,  and  duties ;  its  sturdy  trials, 
fears,  falls,  crosses ;  its  works,  and  wars,  and  woes ;  all 
discovering  to  us,  and  thus  helping  us  to  possess,  our 
selves.  We  get  the  helm  thus  of  our  thoughts,  tempers, 
passions,  aspirations,  and  wants.  And  if  a  vigorous 
training  in  the  school  be  added,  our  capacities  of  taste, 
fancy,  observation,  and  reason  are  also  discovered,  and 
limbered  for  the  free  activity  of  spiritual  play. 

It  will  also  be  seen  that  this  free  state  of  man  in 
volves  a  moral  experience,  and  possibly  somewhat  of  a 
bad  or  selfish  experience,  whereby  his  choices  may  be 
settled  in  the  permanent  love  of  goodness.  For  this,  in 
fact,  is  the  greatness  of  all  greatness,  that  it  is  of  the 
man  himself — the  measure  of  his  own  free  aims  and  as 
pirations.  And  if  so  much  depends  on  the  soul's 
choices,  it  needs  to  be  made  wise  that  it  may  choose 


20  WORK    AND    PLAY. 

wisely,  and  possibly  to  choose  unwisely  in  order  that  it 
may  be  wise.  Thus  it  descends  into  selfishness  and 
evil,  which  are  only  forms  of  work,  there  to  learn  the 
wisdom  of  goodness  in  the  contrasts  of  distaste,  weari 
ness,  and  hunger.  And  this,  I  suppose,  is  the  solution 
of  the  various  travail  that  is  given  to  the  sons  of  men 
to  be  exercised  therewith.  Some  men  work  to  get 
money ;  others,  quite  as  hard  to  spend  it.  Some  men 
work  to  get  reputation ;  others,  who  have  it  by  accident, 
work  harder  in  seeing  it  go  by  a  law.  There  is  a  labori 
ous  ease,  and  even  a  laborious  idleness.  What  we  call 
pleasure  is  commonly  but  another  name  for  work ;  a 
strenuous  joy,  a  laboriously  prepared  and  therefore  wea 
risome  happiness.  We  all  go  to  our  self-serving  and 
work,  till  at  last  we  learn,  it  may  be,  to  cease  from  our 
selves,  and  then — we  play. 

But  there  is  yet  another  office  served  by  work,  with 
out  which  the  state  of  play  is  never  complete.  The 
man  must  find  inspiring  forces,  objects  that  exalt  the 
feeling,  ideals  to  embrace  that  will  beget  a  spontaneous 
greatness  in  him.  But  he  is  ignorant,  at  first,  even 
of  facts ;  and  how  shall  he  find  his  ideals,  unless  they 
are  discovered  in  the  practical  throes  of  experience,  la 
bor,  and  study  ?  How  shall  he  turn  himself  to  things 
that  shine  with  their  own  brightness,  ideal  objects  born 
of  the  soul's  own  thought,  and  luminous  by  a  divine 
quality  hid  in  themselves,  unless  he  has  sweltered  for  a 
time  in  self-exercise  and  the  dust  of  labor  ?  Then,  at 
last,  he  conceives  and  embraces  in  his  love  sublimity, 
beauty,  honor,  truth,  charity,  God ;  and  the  inspiration 


WOHK    AND    PLAY.  21 

he  feels  imparts  to  him  somewhat  of  a  higher  na 
ture,  spontaneously  good,  wise,  great, — joyous  of  ne 
cessity. 

Thus  it  is  that  work  prepares  the  state  of  play. 
Passing  over  now  to  this  latter,  observe  the  intense 
longing  of  the  race  for  some  such  higher  and  freer  state 
of  being.  They  call  it  by  no  name.  Probably  most 
of  them  have  but  dimly  conceived  what  they  are  after. 
The  more  evident  will  it  be  that  they  are  after  this, 
when  we  find  them  covering  over  the  whole  ground  of 
life,  and  filling  up  the  contents  of  history,  with  their 
counterfeits  or  misconceived  attempts.  If  the  hidden 
fire  is  seen  bursting  up  on  every  side,  to  vent  itself  in 
flameT  we  may  certainly  know  that  the  ground  is  fulL 

Let  it  not  surprise  you,  if  I  name,  as  a  first  illustra 
tion  here,  the  general  devotion  of  our  race  to  money. 
This  passion  for  money  is  allowed  to  be  a  sordid  pas-' 
sion,  one  that  is  rankest  in  the  least  generous  and  most 
selfish  of  mankind;  and  yet  a  conviction  has  always 
been  felt,  that  it  must  have  its  heat  in  the  most  central 
fires  and  divinest  affinities  of  our  nature.  Thus  the  poet 
calls  it  the  auri  sacra  fames — sacra,  as  being  a  curse, 
and  that  in  the  divine  life  of  the  race.  Childhood  be 
ing  passed,  and  the  play -fund  of  motion  so  far  spent 
that  running  on  foot  no  longer  appears  to  be  the  joy  it 
was,  the  older  child,  now  called  a  man,  fancies  that  it 
will  make  him  happy  to  ride !  Or  he  imagines,  which 
is  much  the  same,  some  loftier  state  of  being— call  it 
rest,  retirement,  competence,  independence — no  matter 


22  WORK    AND    PLAY. 

by  what  name,  only  be  it  a  condition  of  use,  ease,  lib 
erty,  and  pure  enjoyment.  And  so  we  find  the  whole 
race  at  work  to  get  rid  of  work :  drudging  themselves 
to-day,  in  the  hope  of  play  to-morrow.  This  is  that  sa- 
cra  fames,  which,  misconceiving  its  own  unutterable 
longings  after  spiritual  play,  proposes  to  itself  the  dull 
felicity  of  cessation,  and  drives  the  world  to  madness  in 
pursuit  of  a  counterfeit,  which  it  is  work  to  obtain,  work 
also  to  keep,  and  yet  harder  work  oftentimes  to  enjoy. 
Here,  too,  is  the  secret  of  that  profound  passion  for 
the  drama,  which  has  been  so  conspicuous  in  the  culti 
vated  nations.  We  love  to  see  life  in  its  feeling  and 
activity,  separated  from  its  labors  and  historic  results. 
Could  we  see  all  human  changes  transpire  poetically  or 
creatively,  that  is,  in  play,  letting  our  soul  play  with 
them  as  they  pass,  then  it  were  only  poetry  to  live. 
Then  to  admire,  love,  laugh ;  then  to  abhor,  pity,  weep, 
— all  were  alike  grateful  to  us ;  for  the  view  of  suffer 
ing  separated  from  all  reality,  save  what  it  has  to  feel 
ing,  only  yields  a  painful  joy,  which  is  the  deeper  joy 
because  of  the  pain.  Hence  the  written  drama,  offer 
ing  to  view  in  its  impersonations  a  life  one  side  of  life, 
a  life  in  which  all  the  actings  appear  without  the  ends 
and  simply  as  in  play,  becomes  to  the  cultivated  reader 
a  spring  of  the  intensest  and  most  captivating  spiritual 
incitement.  He  beholds  the  creative  genius  of  a  man 
playing  out  impersonated  groups  and  societies  of  men, 
clothing  each  with  life,  passion,  individuality,  and  cha 
racter,  by  the  fertile  activity  of  his  own  inspired  feeling. 
Meantime  the  writer  himself  is  hidden,  and  can  not 


WORK    AND    PLAY.  23 

even  suggest  his  existence.  Hence  egotism,  which  also 
is  a  form  of  work,  the  dullest,  most  insipid,  least  inspir 
ing  of  all  kinds  of  endeavor,  is  nowhere  allowed  to  ob 
trude  itself.  The  reader  himself,  too,  has  no  ends  to 
think  of  or  to  fear, — nothing  to  do,  but  to  play  the  cha 
racters  into  his  feeling  as  creatures  existing  for  his  sake. 
In  this  view,  the  drama,  as  a  product  of  genius,  is, 
within  a  certain  narrow  limit,  the  realization  of  play. 

But  far  less  effectively,  or  more  faintly,  when  it  is 
acted.  Then  the  counterfeit,  as  it  is  more  remote,  is 
more  feeble.  In  the  reading,  we  invent  our  own  scene 
ries,  clothe  into  form  and  expression  each  one  of  the 
characters,  and  play  out  our  own  liberty  in  them  as 
freely,  and  sometimes  as  divinely,  as  they.  Whatever 
reader,  therefore,  has  a  soul  of  true  life  and  fire  within 
him,  finds  all  expectation  balked,  when  he  becomes  an 
auditor  and  spectator.  The  scenery  is  tawdry  and  flat ; 
the  characters,  definitely  measured,  have  lost  their  in 
finity,  so  to  speak,  and  thus  their  freedom ;  and  what 
before  was  play  descends  to  nothing  better  or  more  in 
spired  than  work.  It  is  called  going  to  the  play,  but  it 
should  rather  be  called  going  to  the  work ;  that  is,  to 
see  a  play 'worked,  (yes,  an  opera  !  that  is  it) — men  and 
women  inspired  through  their  memory,  and  acting  their 
inspirations  by  rote ;  panting  into  love,  pumping  at  the 
fountains  of  grief,  whipping  out  the  passions  into  fury, 
and  dying  to  fulfill  the  contract  of  the  evening,  by  a 
forced  holding  of  the  breath.  And  yet  this  feeble  coun 
terfeit  of  play,  which  some  of  us  would  call  only  "very 
tragical  mirth,"  has  a  power  to  the  multitude.  The;y 


24  WOKK    AND    PLAY. 

are  moved,  thrilled  it  may  be,  with  a  strange  delight. 
It  is  as  if  a  something  in  their  nature,  higher  than  they 
themselves  know,  were  quickened  into  power, — namely, 
that  divine  instinct  of  play,  in  which  the  summit  of  our 
nature  is  most  clearly  revealed. 

In  like  manner,  the  passion  of  our  race  for  war,  and 
the  eager  admiration  yielded  to  warlike  exploits,  are  re 
solvable  principally  into  the  same  fundamental  cause. 
Mere  ends  and  uses  do  not  satisfy  us.  We  must  get 
above  prudence  and  economy,  into  something  that  par 
takes  of  inspiration,  be  the  cost  what  it  may.  Hence 
war,  another  and  yet  more  magnificent  counterfeit  of 
play.  Thus  there  is  a  great  and  lofty  virtue  that  we 
call  cour-age,  taking  our  name  from  the  heart.  It  is  the 
greatness  of  a  great  heart ;  the  repose  and  confidence 
of  a  man  whose  soul  is  rested  in  truth  and  principle. 
Such  a  man  has  no  ends  ulterior  to  his  duty,  duty 
itself  is  his  end.  He  is  in  it  therefore  as  in  play, 
lives  it  as  an  inspiration.  Lifted  thus  out  of  mere  pru 
dence  and  contrivance,  he  is  also  lifted  above  fear. 
Life  to  him  is  the  outgoing  of  his  great  heart, — heart- 
age,  action  from  the  heart.  And  because  he  now  can 
die,  without  being  shaken  or  perturbed  by  any  of  the 
dastardly  feelings  that  belong  to  self-seeking  and  work, 
because  he  partakes  of  the  impassibility  of  his  prin 
ciples,  we  call  him  a  hero,  regarding  him  as  a  kind  of 
god — a  man  who  has  gone  up  into  the  sphere  of  the 
divine. 

.  Then,  since  'courage  is  a  joy  so  high,  a  virtue  of  so 
great  majesty,  what  could  happen  but  that  many  will 


WORK    AND    PLAY.  25 

covet  both  the  internal  exaltation  and  the  outward  re 
pute  of  it?  Thus  comes  bravery,  which  is  the  counter 
feit,  or  mock  virtue.  Courage  is  of  the  heart,  as  we 
have  said ;  bravery  is  of  the  will.  One  is  the  sponta 
neous  joy  and  repose  of  a  truly  great  soul;  the  other, 
bravery,  is  after  an  end  ulterior  to  itself,  and  in  that 
view,  is  but  a  form  of  work, — about  the  hardest  work, 
too,  I  fancy,  that  some  men  undertake.  What  can  be 
harder,  in  fact,  than  to  act  a  great  heart,  when  one  has 
nothing  but  a  will  wherewith  to  do  it  ? 

Thus  you  will  see  that  courage  is  above  danger; 
bravery  in  it,  doing  battle  on  a  level  with  it.  One  is 
secure  and  tranquil,  the  other  suppresses  agitation  or 
conceals  it.  A  right  mind  fortifies  one,  shame  stimu 
lates  the  other.  Faith  is  the  nerve  of  one,  risk  the 
plague  and  tremor  of  the  other.  For  if  I  may  tell  you 
just  here  a  very  important  secret,  there  be  many  that 
are  called  heroes  who  ^are  yet  without  courage.  They 
brave  danger  by  their  will,  when  their  heart  trembles. 
They  make  up  in  violence  what  they  want  in  tranquil 
lity,  and  drown  the  tumult  of  their  fears  in  the  rage  of 
their  passions.  Enter  the  heart  and  you  shall  find,  too 
often,  a  dastard  spirit  lurking  in  your  hero.  Call  him 
still  a  brave  man,  if  you  will,  only  remember  that  he 
lacks  courage. 

No,  the  true  hero  is  the  great,  wise  man  of  duty ;  he 
whose  soul  is  armed  by  truth  and  supported  by  the 
smile  of  God ;  he  who  meets  life'o  perils  with  a  cautious 
but  tranquil  spirit,  gathers  strength  by  facing  its 
storms,  and  dies,  if  he  is  called  to  die,  as  a  Christian 

8 


26  WORK    AND    PLAY. 

victor  at  the  post  of  duty.  And  if  we  must  have 
heroes,  and  wars  wherein  to  make  them,  there  is  no  so 
brilliant  war  as  a  war  with  wrong,  no  hero  so  fit  to  be 
sung  as  he  who  has  gained  the  bloodless  victory  of 
truth  and  mercy. 

But  if  bravery  be  not  the  same  as  courage,  still  it  is 
a  very  imposing  and  plausible  counterfeit.  The  man 
himself  is  told,  after  the  occasion  is  passed,  how  heroic 
ally  he  bore  himself,  and  when  once  his  nerves  have 
become  tranquillized,  he  begins  even  to  believe  it. 
And  since  we  can  not  stay  content  in  the  dull,  unin 
spired  world  of  economy  and  work,  we  are  as  ready  to 
see  a  hero  as  he  to  be  one.  Nay,  we  must  have,  our 
heroes,  as  I  just  said,  and  we  are  ready  to  harness  our 
selves,  by  the  million,  to  any  man  who  will  let  us  fight 
him  out  the  name.  Thus  we  find  out  occasions  for  war 
— wrongs  to  be  redressed,  revenges  to  be  taken,  such  as 
we  may  feign  inspiration  and  play  the  great  heart  un 
der.  We  collect  armies,  and  dress  up  leaders  in  gold 
and  high  colors,  meaning,  by  the  brave  look,  to  inspire 
some  notion  of  a  hero  beforehand.  Then  we  set  the 
men  in  phalanxes  and  squadrons,  where  the  personality 
itself  is  taken  away,  and  a  vast  impersonal  person  called 
an  army,  a  magnanimous  and  brave  monster,  is  all  that 
remains.  The  masses  of  fierce  color,  the  glitter  of  steel, 
the  dancing  plumes,  the  waving  flags,  the  deep  throb 
of  the  music  lifting  every  foot — under  these  the  living 
acres  of  men,  possessed  by  the  one  thought  of  playing 
brave  to-day,  are  rolled  on  to  battle.  Thunder,  fire, 
dust,  blood,  groans — what  of  these?  nobody  thinks  of 


WORK    AND    PLAY.  27 

these,  for  nobody  dares  to  think  till  the  day  is  over, 
and  then  the  world  rejoices  to  behold  a  new  batch  of 
heroes ! 

And  this  is  the  Devil's  play,  that  we  call  war.  We 
have  had  it  going  on  ever  since  the  old  geologic  era  was 
finished.  We  are  sick  enough  of  the  matter  of  it.  We 
understand  well  enough  that  it  is  not  good  economy. 
But  we  can  not  live  on  work.  We  must  have  courage, 
inspiration,  greatness,  play.  Even  the  moral  of  our  na 
ture,  that  which  is  to  weave  us  into  social  union  with 
our  kind  before  God,  is  itself  thirsting  after  play ;  and 
if  we  can  not  have  it  in  good,  why  then  let  us  have  it 
in  as  good  as  we  can.  It  is  at  least  some  comfort,  that 
we  do  not  mean  quite  as  badly  in  these  wars  as  some 
men  say.  We  are  not  in  love  with  murder,  we  are  not 
simple  tigers  in  feeling,  and  some  of  us  come  out  of  bat 
tle  with  kind  and  gentle  qualities  left.-  We  only  must 
have  our  play. 

ISTote  also  this,  that,  since  the  metaphysics  of  fighting 
have  been  investigated,  we  have  learned  to  make  much 
of  what  we  call  the  moral  of  the  army ;  by  which  we 
mean  the  feeling  that  wants  to  play  brave.  Only  it  is  a 
little  sad  to  remember  that  this  same  moral,  as  it  is 
called,  is  the  true,  eternal,  moral  nature  of  the  man  thus 
terribly  perverted, — that  which  was  designed  to  link 
him  to  his  God  and  his  kind,  and  ought  to  be  the  spring 
of  his  immortal  inspirations. 

There  has  been  much  of  speculation  among  the  learn 
ed  concerning  the  origin  of  chivalry ;  nor  has  it  always 
been  clear  to  what  human  elements  this  singular  insti- 


28  WORK    AND     PLAY. 

tution  is  to  be  referred.  But  when  we  look  on  man, 
not  as  a  creature  of  mere  understanding  and  reason,  but 
as  a  creature  also  of  play,  essentially  a  poet  in  that 
which  constitutes  his  higher  life,  we  seem  to  have  a  so 
lution  of  the  origin  of  chivalry,  which  is  sufficient,  whe 
ther  it  be  true  or  not.  In  the  forswearing  of  labor,  in 
the  brave  adventures  of  a  life  in  arms,  in  the  intense 
ideal  devotion  to  woman  as  her  protector  and  avenger, 
in  the  self-renouncing  and  almost  self-oblivious  worship 
of  honor — what  do  we  see  in  these  but  the  mock-moral 
doings  of  a  creature  who  is  to  escape  self-love  and  the 
service  of  ends,  in  a  free,  spontaneous  life  of  goodness ; 
in  whom  courage,  delicacy,  honor,  disinterested  deeds, 
are  themselves  to  be  the  inspiration,  as  they  are  the  end, 
of  his  being  ? 

I  might  also  show,  passing  into  the  sphere  of  religion, 
how  legal  obedience,  which  is  work,  always  descends 
into  superstition,  and  thus  that  religion  must,  in  its  very 
nature  and  life,  be  a  form  of  play — a  worship  offered,  a 
devotion  paid,  not  for  some  ulterior  end,  but  as  being 
its  own  end  and  joy.  I  might  also  show,  in  the  same 
manner,  that  all  the  enthusiastic,  fanatical,  and  properly 
quietistic  modes  of  religion  are  as  many  distinct  coun 
terfeits,  and,  in  that  manner,  illustrations  of  my  subject. 
But  this  you  will  see  at  a  glance,  without  illustration. 
Only  observe  how  vast  a  field  our  illustrations  cover. 
In  the  infatuated  zeal  of  our  race  for  the  acquisition  of 
money,  in  the  drama,  in  war,  in  chivalry,  in  perverted 
religion — in  all  these  forms,  covering  almost  the  whole 
ground  of  humanity  with  counterfeits  of  play,  that  are 


WORK    AND    PLAY.  29 

themselves  the  deepest  movements  of  the  race,  I  show 
you  the  boundless  sweep  of  this  divine  instinct,  and 
how  surely  we  may  know  that  the  perfected  state  of  man 
is  a  state  of  beauty,  truth,  and  love,  where  life  is  its  own 
end  and  joy. 

Passing  now  into  the  life  of  letters,  we  may  carry 
with  us  a  light  that  will  make  intelligible  and  clear 
some  important  distinctions  that  are  not  always  appre 
hended. 

Here  is  the  distinction  between  genius  and  talent, 
which  some  of  our  youthful  scholars  are  curious  to  set 
tle.  Genius  is  that  which  is  good  for  play,  talent  that 
which  is  good  for  work.  The  genius  is  an  inspired 
man,  a  man  whose  action  is  liberty,  whose  creations  are 
their  own  end  and  joy.  Therefore  we  speak,  not  of  the 
man's  doing  this  or  that,  but  of  the  man's  genius  as  do 
ing  it;  as  if  there  were  some  second  spirit  attendant, 
yielding  him  thoughts,  senses,  imaginations,  fires  of 
emotion,  that  are  above  his  measure — lifting  him  thus 
into  exaltations  of  freedom  and  power  that  partake  of 
a  certain  divine  quality.  His  distinction  is,  in  fact, 
that  he  is  a  demonized  or  demonizable  man.  Talent, 
on  the  other  hand,  we  conceive  to  be  of  the  man  him 
self,  a  capacity  that  is  valuable  as  related  to  ends  and 
uses,  such  as  the  acquisition  of  knowledge  or  money,  to 
build,  cultivate,  teach,  frame  polities,  manage  causes, 
fill  magistracies. 

But  we  need  to  add  that  talent,  in  every  sphere, 
passes  into  genius  through  exercise;  for  if  geniuses  are 


30  WOKK    ANI>    PLAY. 

born,  as  we  sometimes  hear,  they  must  yet  be  born 
again  of  study,  struggle,  and  work.  First  the  man 
comes  into  action,  gets  possession  of  himself,  fills  out 
the  tone  of  his  energies  by  efforts  and  struggles  that 
are  of  the  will.  If  then  ideas  find  him,  when  he  is 
ploughing  in  uses,  and  drop  their  mantle  on  him,  he  be 
comes  a  prophet.  I  say,  if  they  find  him ;  for  he  is  lit 
tle  likely  to  find  them,  by  going  after  them.  Inspira 
tion  sought  is  inspiration  hindered.  It  must  be  a  call. 
No  man  makes  a  breeze  for  his  vessel  by  blowing  in  the 
sail  himself.  Neither  is  any  man  to  act  the  genius  will 
fully,  or  to  have  it  for  a  question,  previous  to  study  and 
work,  whether  possibly  he  is  born  to  the  life  of  genius. 
To  preconceive  the  life  is,  in  fact,  not  to  suffer  it.  The 
most  any  mortal  can  do  in  this  matter  is  to  do  nothing, 
— save  to  offer  a  pure,  industrious,  lively  nature  to  all 
beauty  and  good,  and  be  willing  to  serve  them,  till  he 
is  permitted  to  reign  with  them.  If  then  there  fall  into 
his  bosom,  as  it  were  out  of  heaven,  thoughts,  truths, 
feelings,  acts  of  good  to  be  done,  all  of  which  are  joy 
and  reward  in  their  own  nature,  and  the  man,  taking 
fire  in  these,  as  with  something  divine,  rises  into  play, 
that  is  the  kind  of  activity  we  mean  by  the  word  genius. 
For  if  there  be  an  example,  now  and  then,  of  some  pre 
cocious  fondling,  who  appears  to  be  born  to  inspiration, 
and  begins  to  play  in  the  lap,  as  it  were,  of  mere  nature 
— plays  in  the  university  as  a  poet,  too  divinely  gifted 
for  the  tough  discipline  of  study — if  possibly  he  is  reck 
oned  a  genius,  he  will  yet  turn  out  to  be  a  genius  of  the 
small  order,  and  it  will  be  wonderful,  if,  as  lambs  and 


WOKK    AND    FLAY.  31 

kittens  are  sobered  by  the  graver  habit  of  their  major 
ity,  the  growth  of  his  beard  does  not  exhaust 'his  inspi 
ration.  However  this  may  be,  all  the  heavy  and  mass 
ive  forms  of  genius,  all  the  giants  of  inspiration,  are 
sons  of  work. 

Such  being  the  distinction  between  talent  and  genius, 
we  shall  look  for  a  like  distinction  in  their  demonstra 
tions  ;  the  distinction,  namely,  of  work  and  play,  activ 
ity  for  an  end  and  activity  as  an  end,  that  of  the  empty 
and  that  of  the  full,  the  acquisitive  and  the  creative,  the 
ascent  of  the  ladder  and  the  ascent  of  fire. 

Here  lies  the  distinction  between  wit  and  humor,  a 
distinction  which  the  rhetoricians  have  not  always  dis 
tinctly  traced,  though  well  aware  of  some  real  and  very 
wide  difference  in  their  effects.  Wit  is  work,  humor  is 
play.  One  is  the  dry  labor  of  intention  or  design,  am 
bition  eager  to  provoke  applause,  malignity  biting  at  an 
adversary,  envy  letting  down  the  good  or  the  exalted. 
The  other,  humor,  is  the  soul  reeking  with  its  own 
moisture,  laughing  because  it  is  full  of  laughter,  as 
ready  to  weep  as  to  laugh ;  for  the  copious  shower  it 
holds  is  good  for  either.  And  then,  when  it  has  set  the 
tree  a- dripping, 

"  And  hung  a  pearl  in  very  cowslip's  ear," 

the  pure  sun  shining  after  will  reveal  no  color  of  inten 
tion  in  the  sparkling  drop,  but  will  leave  you  doubting 
still  whether  it  be  a  drop  let  fall  by  laughter,  or — a 
tear. 

The  rhetoricians  have  also  labored  much  to  make  out 
some  external  definition  by  which  prose  may  be  distin- 


32  WORK    AND    PLAY. 

guished  from  poetry.  No  such  distinction  is  possible, 
till  we  pass  into  the  mind  of  the  writer,  and  contemplate 
his  subjective  state.  If  he  writes  for  some  use  or  end 
ulterior  to  the  writing,  and  of  course  superior  as  a  mo 
tive,  or  if  we  read  with  a  feeling  produced  that  the  writ 
ing  is  only  means  to  an  end,  that  is  prose.  On  the 
other  hand,  every  sort  of  writing  which  is  its  own  end,, 
an  utterance  made  because  the  soul  is  full  of  feeling, 
beauty,  and  truth,  and  wants  to  behold  her  own  joy,  is 
poetry.  She  sings  because  the  music  is  in  her  heart. 
Her  divine  thought  burns,  and  words  flock  round  about, 
fanning  the  fire  with  their  wings,  till  she  goes  up  in 
flame,  unable  to  stay. 

Poetry,  therefore,  is  play,  as  distinguished  from  prose, 
which  is  work.  Hence,  too,  poetry  is  distinguished 
from  prose  by  a  certain  quality  that  we  call  rhythm. 
For  when  a  man  thinks  or  acts  for  an  end  ulterior,  sug 
gested  by  self-love,  then  the  drag  of  his  end,  being  to 
wards  himself,  makes  a  specialty  of  him, — he  is  a  mote 
in  the  great  universe,  centered  in  itself  and  not  in  the 
sun,  and  pulling  to  get  something  to  or  in  itself;  there 
fore  he  is  out  of  rhythm  in  his  feeling,  and  the  music  of 
the  stars  will  not  chime  with  him.  But  when  he  lets 
go  his  private  want  or  end  to  play,  then  he  is  part  of 
the  great  universe  under  God,  and  consciously  one  with 
it,  and  then  he  falls  into  the  rhythmic  dance  of  the 
worlds,  giving  utterance,  in  beat  and  number,  to  a  feel 
ing  that  is  itself  played  into  beat  and  number,  weaving 
and  waving  with  those  graces  that  circle  the  throne  of 
all  beauty,  and  chiming  with  the  choirs  of  light  in  their 


WORK    AND    PLAY.  33 

universal,  but,  to  the  most  of  mankind,  inaudible,  hymn. 
Or,  to  bring  an  instance  from  below  the  stars,  where  no 
fiction  may  be  suspected;  as  the  mountains  of  the 
world,  having  a  certain  secret  law  of  rhythm  in  their 
moulds  and  granite  masses,  take  up  the  discordant 
sounds  of  horns  or  screaming  voices,  part  the  discords, 
toss  the  silvering  harmonies  about  in  reduplicating  beats 
of  echo,  and  fine  away  the  notes  till  they  seem  vibra 
tions  of  spirit,  pulsing  still,  after  the  air  is  silent ;  so, 
when  a  man  falls  under  inspiration  from  God  and  his 
worlds,  and  begins  to  play,  his  soul  forthwith  becomes 
a  tuneful  creature ;  his  thoughts  submit  to  the  univer 
sal  rhythmic  laws,  and  when  he  speaks  he  sings. 

If  in  verse,  then,  the  number  is  cast  by  the  feeling  or 
inspiration ;  all  is  of  the  feeling,  and  the  words  are 
gathered  into  their  places,  not  by  choice,  but  by  a  cer 
tain  instinct  which  they  themselves  feel  after ;  as  when 
birds  of  passage  hook  themselves  to  each  other  in 
waving  lines  of  propagated  action,  all  feeling  all,  and 
chiming  in  the  beat  of  their  wings.  If  the  writing  be 
in  the  form  of  prose,  and  yet  be  truly  in  play,  still  it 
will  be  felt  that  some  higher  law  than  choice  has  called 
the  words  into  their  places.  We  have  still  a  feeling  of 
number  and  rhythm,  and  certain  mystic  junctures  and 
cadences,  born,  as  it  were,  of  music,  remind  us  that  the 
son  of  song  is  here. 

The  same  may  be  said  of  the  orator ;  for  there  is  no 
definite  line  of  distinction,  as  many  imagine,  between 
the  true  orator  and  the  poet, — unless  we  say  that  the 
orator  is  the  poet  in  action,  the  impersonation  of  rhythm 


o-  WORK    AND    PLAY. 

and  play.  For  though,  the  speaker  begins  with  a  cause 
which  he  is  charged  to  gain,  jet  as  he  kindles  with  his 
theme  and  rises  into  inspired  action,  his  men  become 
gods,  his  cause  is  lifted  out  of  the  particular  into  the 
universal,  or  into  such  a  height  that  speaking  for  it  be 
comes  an  end  in  itself,  and  his  advocacy,  raised  above 
the  mere  prose  level,  becomes  a  lofty,  energetic  impro 
vising.  What  he  began  with  a  purpose  hurries  him  on 
now  as  a  passion.  His  look  changes.  His  voice  takes 
a  modulation  not  of  the  will.  His  words  and  cadences 
seem  rather  to  make  use  of  him  than  to  be  used  by  him. 
His  action,  being  no  longer  voluntary,  but  spontaneous, 
falls  into  the  rhythm  of  play,  where  you  distinguish  the 
sharp,  invective  iambic,  the  solemn,  religious  spondee, 
the  swift  trochaic  run  of  eagerness  or  fear,  the  heavy 
molossic  tread  of  grief  or  sorrow.  He  becomes,  in  fact, 
a  free  lyric  in  his  own  living  person,  the  most  ani 
mated  and  divinest  embodiment  of  play, — thus  and 
therefore  a  power  sublime  above  all  others  possible  to 
man. 

Pursuing  the  same  method,  I  might  also  exhibit  a 
similar  distinction  of  work  and  play  between  rhetorical 
beauty,  labored  by  the  rules  of  the  professors,  and  the 
free  beauty  of  original  creation.  Criticism  holds  a  like 
relation  to  all  the  productive  energies  of  genius ;  logic 
also  a  like  relation  to  the  spiritual  insight  of  reason  ; 
understanding  a  like  relation  to  the  realizations  of  faith. 

There  is  yet  another  topic  which  requires  to  be  illus 
trated,  in  order  to  complete  my  subject,  but  which  I  can 
touch  only  in  the  briefest  manner.  I  speak  of  philoso- 


WOKK    AND    PLAY.  35 

phic  method,  or  the  true  method  of  scientific  discovery. 
The  inductive  method,  sometimes  called  the  Baconian, 
is  commonly  represented  in  a  manner  that  would  make 
the  philosopher  the  dullest  of  beings,  and  philosophy 
the  dullest  of  all  drudgeries.  It  is  merely  to  classify 
facts  on  a  basis  of  comparison  or  abstraction ;  that  is,  to 
arrange  a  show-box  and  call  it  philosophy !  No,  the 
first  and  really  divine  work  of  philosophy  is  to  generate 
ideas,  which  are  then  to  be  verified  by  facts  or  experi 
ments.  Therefore  we  shall  find  that  a  certain  capacity 
of  elevation  or  poetic  ardor  is  the  most  fruitful  source 
of  discovery.  The  man  is  raised  to  a  pitch  of  insight 
and  becomes  a  seer,  entering  into  things  through  God's 
constitutive  ideas,  to  read  them  as  from  God.  For  what 
are  laws  of  science  but  ideas  of  God, — those  regulative 
types  of  thought  by  which  God  created,  moves,  and 
rules  the  worlds  ?  Thus  it  is  that  the  geometrical  and 
mathematical  truths  become  the  prime  sources  of  scien 
tific  inspiration ;  for  these  are  the  pure  intellectualities 
of  being,  and  have  their  life  in  God.  Accordingly,  an 
eloquent  modern  writer  says, — "I  am  persuaded  that 
many  a  problem  of  analysis  of  Kepler,  Galileo,  Newton, 
and  Euler,  and  the  solution  of  many  an  equation,  sup 
pose  as  much  intuition  and  inspiration  as  the  finest  ode 
of  Pindar.  Those  pure  and  incorruptible  formulas 
which  already  were  before  the  world  was,  that  will  be 
after  it,  governing  throughout  all  time  and  space,  being, 
as  it  were,  an  integral  part  of  God,  put  the  mathemati 
cian  in  profound  communion  with  the  Divine  Thought. 
In  those  immutable  truths,  he  savors  what  is  purest  in 


36  WORK    AND    PLAY. 

the  creation.  He  says  to  the  worlds,  like  the  ancient, — 
'Let  us  be  silent,  we  shall  hear  the  murmuring  of  the 
Gods.' " 

Accordingly  we  find,  as  a  matter  of  historic  fact,  that 
the  singular  and  truly  wonderful  man  who  first  broke 
into  the  ordinances  of  heaven  and  got  a  foothold  there 
for  definite  science  was  inflamed  and  led  on  by  the  in 
spirations  of  geometry.  "Figures  pleased  me,"  he  says, 
"as  being  quantities,  and  as  having  existed  before  the 
heavens."  Therefore  he  expected  to  find  the  heavens 
included  under  geometric  figures.  Half  mad  with  pro 
phetic  feeling,  and  astrologically  possessed  also  by  the 
stars,  he  goes  up  among  them  praying  and  joking  and 
experimenting  together,  trying  on,  as  it  were,  his  geo 
metric  figures  to  see  how  they  will  fit,  and  scolding  the 
obstinacy  of  heaven  when  they  will  not ;  doubting  then 
whether  "perhaps  the  gibbous  moon,  in  the  bright  con 
stellation  of  the  Bull's  forehead,  is  not  filling  his  mind 
with  fantastic  images;"  returning  again  to  make  ano 
ther  trial,  and  enduring  labors  which,  if  done  in  the 
spirit  of  work,  would  have  crushed  any  mortal, — till,  at 
last,  behold !  his  prophetic  formula  settles  into  place ! 
the  heavens  acknowledge  it!  And  he  breaks  out  in 
holy  frenzy,  crying, — "What  I  prophesied  two-and- 
twenty  years  ago,  as  soon  as  I  discovered  the  five  solids 
among  the  heavenly  orbits ;  what  I  believed  before  I 
had  seen  Ptolemy's  Harmonics;  what  I  had  promised 
my  friends;  that  for  which  I  joined  Tycho  Brahe,  I 
have  brought  to  light !  It  is  now  eighteen  months  since 
I  got  the  first  glimpse  of  light;  three  months  since  the 


WORK    AXD    PLAY.  37 

dawn ;  very  few  days  since  the  unveiled  sun,  most  ad 
mirable  to  gaze  on,  burst  out  upon  me.  Nothing  holds 
me  ;  I  indulge  my  sacred  fury !  I  triumph  over  man 
kind  !  The  die  is  cast;  the  book  is  written, — to  be  read, 
either  now,  or  by  posterity,  I  care  not  which.  It  may 
well  wait  a  century  for  a  reader,  as  God  has  been  wait 
ing  six  thousand  years  for  an  observer!" 

And  yet  this  man  was  no  philosopher,  some  will 
say ;  he  did  not  proceed  by  induction  and  the  classifi 
cation  of  facts,  he  only  made  a  lucky  guess !  Be  it  so, 
it  was  yet  such  a  guess  as  must  be  made  before  science 
could  get  any  firm  hold  of  the  sky;  such  a  guess  as 
none  but  this  most  enthusiastic  and  divinely  gifted  mor 
tal,  trying  at  every  gate  of  knowledge  there,  could  ever 
have  made. 

So  too  it  is  now,  always  has  been,  always  will  be, — 
boast  of  our  Baconian  method  as  we  may,  misconceive 
the  real  method  of  philosophy  as  we  certainly  do, — all 
great  discoveries,  not  purely  accidental,  will  be  gifts  to 
insight,  and  the  true  man  of  science  will  be  he  who  can 
best  ascend  into  the  thoughts  of  Grod,  he  who  burns  be 
fore  the  throne  in  the  clearest,  purest,  mildest  light  of 
reason. 

Thus,  also,  it  was  that  Linnaeus,  when  the  mystic  and 
almost  thinking  laws  of  vegetable  life  began  to  open 
upon  him,  cried, — u  Deum  sempilernum,  omniscium,  om- 
nipotentem,  a  tergo  tmnseuntem,  vidi,  et  obstupuif" 

So,  too,  when  the  animate  races  are  to  open  their  won 
drous  history,  you  yourselves  have  seen  the  hand  of 
play,  or  of  scientific  genius,  dashing  out,  stroke  by 


38  WORK    AND    PLAY. 

stroke,  in  a  few  free  lines,  those  creative  types  of  God 
in  which  the  living  orders  had  their  spring ;  and  have 
seemed,  in  the  chalk  formation  of  the  lecture-room,  to 
see  those  creatures  leaping  into  life,  which  the  other  and 
older  chalk  formation  under  ground  has  garnered  there, 
as  the  cabinet  of  Jehovah. 

But  it  is  time  to  bring  these  illustrations  to  a  close, 
and  it  is  scarcely  for  me  to  choose  the  manner.  They 
have  their  own  proper  close,  towards  which  they  have 
all  the  way  been  drawing  us,  and  that  we  must  now  ac 
cept  ;  namely,  this, — that,  as  childhood  begins  with  play, 
so  the  last  end  of  man,  the  pure  ideal  in  which  his  being 
is  consummated,  is  a  state  of  play.  And  if  we  look  for 
this  perfected  state,  we  shall  find  it  nowhere,  save  in  re 
ligion.  Here  at  last  man  "is  truly  and  completely  man. 
Here  the  dry  world  of  work  and  the  scarcely  less  dry 
counterfeits  of  play  are  left  behind.  Partial  inspirations 
no  longer  suffice.  The  man  ascends  into  a  state  of  free 
beauty,  where  well-doing  is  its  own  end  and  joy,  where 
life  is  the  simple  flow  of  love,  and  thought,  no  longer 
colored  in  the  prismatic  hues  of  prejudice  and  sin,  re 
joices  ever  in  the  clear  white  light  of  truth.  Exactly 
this  we  mean,  when  we  say  that  Christianity  brings  an 
offer  of  liberty  to  man ;  for  the  Christian  liberty  is  only 
pure  spiritual  play.  Delivered  of  self-love,  fear,  con 
trivance,  legal  constraints,  termagant  passions,  in  a  word, 
of  all  ulterior  ends  not  found  in  goodness  itself,  the  man 
ascends  into  power,  and  reveals,  for  the  first  time,  the 
real  greatness  of  his  nature. 


WORK    AND    PLAY.  39 

I  speak  thus,  not  professionally,  but  as  any  one,  who 
is  simply  a  man  of  letters,  should.  I  am  well  aware 
that  Christianity  has  hitherto  failed  to  realize  the  noble 
consummation  of  which  I  speak.  We  have  been  too 
much  in  opinions  to  receive  inspirations ;  occupied  too 
much  with  fires  and  anathemas,  to  be  filled  with  this 
pure  love ;  too  conversant  with  mock  virtues  and  un 
charitable  sanctities,  to  receive  this  beauty  or  be  kindled 
by  this  heavenly  flame.  And  yet  how  evident  is  it  that 
religion  is  the  only  element  of  perfected  freedom  and 
greatness  to  a  soul !  for  here  alone  does  it  finally  escape 
from  self,  and  come  into  the  perfect  life  of  play.  For 
just  as  the  matter  of  the  worlds  wants  a  law  to  settle  its 
motions  and  be  its  element  of  order,  so  all  intelligences 
want  their  element  of  light,  rest,  beauty,  and  play  in 
God.  Hence  we  are  to  look,  as  tire  world  rises  out  of 
its  barbaric  fires  and  baptized  animosities  into  the  sim 
ple  and  free  life  of  love,  to  see  a  beauty  unfolded  in  hu 
man  thought  and  feeling,  as  much^more  graceful  as  it  is 
freer  and  closer  to  God.  Christian  love  is  demonstrably 
the  only  true  ground  of  a  perfect  aesthetic  culture.  In 
deed,  there  is  no  perfect  culture  of  any  kind,  which 
does  not  carry  the  man  out  of  himself,  and  kindle  in  his 
human  spirit  those  free  aspirations  that  shall  bear  him 
up,  as  in  flame,  to  God's  own  person. 

Therefore  I  believe  in  a  future  age,  yet  to  be  revealed, 
which  is  to  be  distinguished  from  all  others  as  the  godly 
or  godlike  age, — an  age  not  of  universal  education  sim 
ply,  or  universal  philanthropy,  or  external  freedom,  or 
political  well-being,  but  a  day  of  reciprocity  and  free 


40  WORK    AND    PLAY. 

intimacy  between  all  souls  and  God.  Learning  and  re 
ligion,  the  scholar  and  the  Christian,  will  not  be  divided 
as  they  have  been.  The  universities  will  be  filled  with 
a  profound  spirit  of  religion,  and  the  bene  ordsse  will  be 
a  fountain  of  inspiration  to  all  the  investigations  of 
study  and  the  creations  of  genius. 

I  raise  this  expectation  of  the  future,  not  because 
some  prophet  of  old  time  has  spoken  of  a  day  to  come, 
when  "the  streets  of  the  city  shall  be  full  of  boys  and 
girls  playing  in  the  streets  thereof,"  (for  I  know  not  that 
he  meant  to  be  so  interpreted,)  but  because  I  find  a  pro 
phecy  of  play  in  our  nature  itself,  which  it  were  a  vio 
lation  of  all  insight  not  to  believe  will  some  time  be 
fulfilled.  And  when  it  is  fulfilled,  it  will  be  found  that 
Christianity  has,  at  last,  developed  a  new  literary  era, 
the  era  of  religious  love. 

Hitherto,  the  love  of  passion  has  been  the  central  fire 
of  the  world's  literature.  The  dramas,  epics,  odes,  nov 
els,  and  even  histories,  have  spoken  to  the  world's  heart 
chiefly  through  this  passion,  and  through  this  have  been 
able  to  get  their  answer.  For  this  passion  is  a  state  of 
play,  wherein  the  man  loses  himself,  in  the  ardor  of  a 
devotion  regardless  of  interest,  fear,  care,  prudence,  and 
even  of  life  itself.  Hence  there  gathers  round  the  lover 
a  tragic  interest,  and  we  hang  upon  his  destiny,  as  if 
some  natural  charm  or  spell  were  in  it.  Now  this  pas 
sion  of  love,  which  has  hitherto  been  the  staple  of  liter 
ature,  is  only  a  crude  symbol  in  the  life  of  nature,  by 
which  God  designs  to  interpret,  and  also  to  foreshadow, 
'the  higher  love  of  religion, — nature's  gentle  Beatrice, 


WORK    AND    PLAY.  41 

who  puts  her  image  in  the  youthful  Dante,  by  that  to 
attend  him  afterwards  in  the  spirit-flight  of  song,  and 
be  his  guide  up  through  the  wards  of  Paradise  to  the 
shining  mount  of  God.  What,  then,  are  we  to  think, 
but  that  God  will  some  time  bring  us  up  out  of  the  liter 
ature  of  the  lower  love,  into  that  of  the  higher  ? — that* 
as  the  age  of  passion  yields  to  the  age  of  reason,  so  the 
crude  love  of  instinct  will  give  place  to  the  loftier, 
finer,  more  impelling  love  of  God  ?  And  then,  around 
that  nobler  love,  or  out  of  it,  shall  arise  a  new  body  of 
literature,  as  much  more  gifted  as  the  inspiration  is 
purer  and  more  intellectual.  Beauty,  truth,  and  wor 
ship  ;  song,  science,  and  duty,  will  all  be  unfolded  to 
gether  in  this  common  love. 

Society  must  of  course  receive  a  correspondent  beauty 
into  its  character  and  feeling,  such  as  can  be  satisfied  no 
longer  with  the  old  barbaric  themes  of  war  and  passion. 
To  be  a  scholar  and  not  to  be  a  Christian,  to  produce 
the  fruits  of  genius  without  a  Christian  inspiration,  will 
no  longer  be  thought  of;  and  religion,  heretofore  looked 
upon  as  a  ghostly  constraint  upon  life,  it  will  now  be 
acknowledged,  is  the  only  sufficient  fertilizer  of  genius, 
as  it  is  the  only  real  emancipator  of  man. 

If  now  it  be  doubted  whether  a  hope  of  so  great 
beauty  is  ever  to  be  realized  here  on  earth ;  whether, 
indeed,  the  visions  of  the  Christian  seers  that  look  this 
way  are  more  than  rhapsodies  of  their  poetic  mood,  it 
must  be  enough  that  just  such  rhapsodies  of  promise 
are  chanted  by  the  world's  own  order.  Let  no  expecta 
tion  seem  romantic  because  it  wears  the  air  of  poetry ; 

4* 


42  WOKK    AX1)    PLAY. 

for  religion  is  itself  the  elemental  force  of  all  free 
beauty,  and  thus  of  a  life  essentially  poetic.  Its  in 
spired  seers  and  prophets  are  the  poets  of  God.  Its 
glorious  future  bursts  up  ever  into  song,  and  pictures 
itself  to  the  view  in  poetic  sceneries  and  visions.  Even 
the  occupations  and  felicities  of  the  good  beyond  life 
are  representable  only  in  the  play  of  choirs  and  chimes 
of  poetic  joy.  Music  and  rhythm  are  the  natural  pow 
ers,  indeed,  of  order  and  crystallization,  in  the  social 
life  of  all  moral  natures ;  as  we  see  in  the  fact  that  the 
ancient  laws  of  the  race  were  framed  in  verse,  and  sung 
into  authority,  as  the  carmen  necessarium  of  the  state. 
Therefore  I  can  easily  persuade  myself,  that,  if  the 
world  were  free, — free,  I  mean,  of  themselves, — brought 
up,  all,  out  of  work  into  the  pure  inspiration  of  truth 
and  charity,  new  forms  of  personal  and  intellectual 
beauty  would  appear,  and  society  itself  reveal  the  Or 
phic  movement.  No  more  will  it  be  imagined  that 
poetry  and  rhythm  are  accidents  or  figments  of  the  race, 
one  side  of  all  ingredient  or  ground  in  nature.  But  we 
shall  know  that  poetry  is  the  real  and  true  state  of  man, 
the  proper  and  last  ideal  of  souls,  the  free  beauty  they 
long  for,  and  the  rhythmic  flow  of  that  universal  play 
in  which  all  life  would  live. 


II. 

THE  TRUE  WEALTH  OR  WEAL  OF  NATIONS.* 


MR.  PRESIDENT, — 

IT  is  truly  a  great  satisfaction  to  me,  that  I  appear 
before  you,  not  to  claim  a  place,  but  only  to  supply  a 
chasm  in  the  succession  of  your  distinguished  and  elo 
quent  speakers.  I  am  thus  permitted  to  feel,  that  I 
discharge  an  office  rather  of  good  will  and  fraternity, 
than  of  ambition ;  and  if  I  do  not  leap  into  the  chasm 
that  has  occurred,  with  exactly  the  zeal  of  a  Curtius,  I 
may  at  least  cherish  the  hope,  as  I  go  down,  that  the 
ground  will  close  over  me,  and  the  line  of  your  dis 
tinguished  orators  pass  on  without  any  mark  of  disrup 
tion. 

I  propose  to  speak  of  the  greatness  and  happiness  of 
states,  and  especially  of  our  own ;  which  I  shall  do,  not 
ambitiously,  or  as  coveting  the  distinction  of  an  orator, 
but  in  the  way  of  practical  and  grave  discussion. 

Wherein  consists,  and  how  shall  be  attained,  the  true 
greatness  and  felicity  of  a  -state  ? 

My  chief  concern  will  be  to  offer  something  which, 

*  Delivered  as  an  Oration  before  the  Society  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  Yale 
College,  August  15,  A.  D.  1837. 


44:  THE    TllUE    WEALTH 

for  argument  and  doctrine,  is  worthy  of  so  grave  a 
problem.  I  hope  it  may  appear,  that  a  ground  is  here 
open  for  the  erection  of  a  science  more  adequate,  in 
some  respects,  than  the  science,  so  called,  of  political 
economy  ;  and  one  that  shall  base  itself  on  higher  and 
more  determinate  principles.  That  the  body  and  form 
of  such  a  science  can  be  developed  in  a  single  discourse, 
will  not  be  supposed.  If  I  am  only  able  to  open  a  pas 
sage,  so  that  we  may  look  in  upon  the  field  to  be  occu 
pied,  or  if  I  may  but  excite  to  investigation  of  the  subject 
the  young  men  of  this  honored  university,  who  are  soon 
to  fill  public  stations  and  diffuse  the  leaven  of  their  opin 
ions  in  every  part  of  the  republic,  my  end  will  be  an 
swered. 

If  any,  in  our  present  crisis  of  difficulty  and  depres 
sion,  have  ceased  to  hope  for  their  country,  it  needs  to 
be  remembered,  as  a  check  to  this  precipitate  despair, 
how  much  of  mischief  and  misrule  every  great  nation 
has  had  to  survive.  Moreover,  I  know  not  the  time 
when  the  prospects  of  our  country,  judiciously  viewed, 
were  brighter  than  now.  That  we  are  able  to  bear  so 
violent  a  shock,  without  any  disruption  of  the  laws,  is 
enough,  in  itself,  to  encourage  new  confidence  in  our 
institutions.  This  strong-handed  compulsion,  too,  which 
has  checked  the  impetuosity  and  the  increasing  reck 
lessness  of  our  people,  is  accomplishing,  by  force,  what 
arguments  and  warnings  were  powerless  to  effect — com 
pelling  them  to  know  the  worth  of  principles  and  of 
wise  and  judicious  leaders.  We  have  not  yet  come  to 
the  end  of  our  institutions,  but  rather  to  an  interreg- 


OK    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  45 

num  of  sobriety  and  reason,  in  which  truth  may  find  a 
place  to  interpose  her  counsels,  and  in  which,  I  trust, 
the  most  solid  and  healthful  principles  are  to  find  a 
more  ready  reception. 

It  is  in  this  confidence  that  I  now  speak.  And  while 
I  am  encouraged  by  the  temper  of  the  times,  I  can  not 
expel  the  conviction,  too,  of  some  positive  and  peculiar 
agreement  between  my  subject — I  trust  also  between 
the  principles  to  be  advanced — and  a  destiny  of  real 
greatness,  certainly  to  be  reached  by  our  country. 
There  are  too  many  prophetic  signs  admonishing  us, 
that  Almighty  Providence  is  pre-engaged  to  make  this 
a  truly  great  nation,  not  to  be  cheered  by  them,  and  set 
ourselves  to/i  search  after  the  true  principles  of  national 
welfare,  with  a  confidence  that  here,  at  last,  they  are  to 
find  their  opportunity.  This  western  world  had  not 
been  preserved  unknown  through  so  many  ages,  for  any 
purpose  less  sublime,  than  to  be  opened,  at  a  certain 
stage  of  history,  and  become  the  theater  wherein  better 
principles  might  have  room  and  free  development. 
Out  of  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  world,  too,  a  select^ 
stock,  the  Saxon,  and  out  of  this  the  British  family,  the 
noblest  of  the  stock,  was  chosen  to  people  our  country ; 
that  our  eagle,  like  that  of  the  prophet,  might  have  the"" 
cedars  of  Lebanon,  and  the  topmost  branches  of  the  ce 
dars,  to  plant  by  his  great  waters.  A  belt  of  temperate 
climate  was  also  marked  out  for  our  country,  in  the 
midst  of  a  vast  continent,  with  a  view,  it  would  seem, 
to  preserve  the  vigor  of  the  stock,  and  make  it  fruitful 
here,  as  it  ever  has  been,  in  great  names  and  great  ac- 


46  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

tions.  Furthermore,  it  is  impossible  to  glance  at  the 
very  singular  territory  we  occupy,  without  perceiving 
that  the  two  great  elements  of  force  are  to  be  developed 
together,  in  this  people,  as  they  never  yet  have  been  in 
history.  These  elements,  of  course,  are  ,weight  and 
motion — vastness  of  conception  and  vigor  of  action. 
Though  we  have  a  field  every  way  ample  to  contain 
two  hundred  millions  of  inhabitants,  there  is  yet  no 
vast  central  inland,  remote  from  the  knowledge  and 
commerce  of  mankind,  where  a  people  may  dream  out 
life,  in  the  gigantic  but  crude  and  sluggish  images  of 
Asiatic  repose.  Yast  as  it  is,  and  filling  the  minds  of 
its  people  always  with  images  of  vastness,  it  is  }^et  sur 
rounded,  like  the  British  islands,  and  perjneated,  like 
Venice  itself,  by  the  waters  of  commerce — becoming 
thus  a  field  of  vastness,  not  in  repose,  but  in  action. 
On  the  west  it  meets  the  Pacific,  and  the  waters  of 
another  hemisphere.  On  the  east  and  south,  a  long 
bold  line  of  coast  sweeps  round,  showing  the  people 
more  than  a  thousand  leagues  of  the  highway  of  the 
world.  On  the  north,  again,  stretches  a  vast*  mediter 
ranean  of  congregated  seas,  sounding  to  each  other  in  a 
boisterous  wild  chorus,  and  opening  their  gates  to  the 
commerce  of  far  distant  regions.  Then  again,  across 
the  land,  down  all  the  slopes  and  through  valleys  large 
enough  for  empires,  sweep  rivers  that  are  moving 
lakes.  All  the  features  of  the  land  are  such  as  con 
spire  to  form  a  people  of  vast  conceptions,  and  the  most 
intense  practical  vigor  and  activity.  And  already  do 
these  two  elements  of  force  appear  in  our  people,  in  a 


OK    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  47 

combination  more  striking  and  distinct  than  ever  before 
in  any  people  whose  education  was  so  unripe.  Need  I 
say,  that  such  a  people  can  not  exist  without  a  great 
history.  We  have  been  told,  that  stars  of  nobility  and 
orders  of  hierarchy,  as  they  exist  in  the  old  world,  are 
indispensable,  as  symbols,  to  make  authority  visible, 
and  inspire  the  people  with  great  and  patriotic  senti 
ments.  But  how  shall  we  long  for  these,  in  a  country 
where  God  has  ennobled  the  land  itself  in  every  feature, 
filling  it  with  the  signs  of  his  own  august  royalty,  and 
training  the  people  up  to  spiritual  vastness  and  force  by 
symbols  of  his  own !  N 

%          * 

But  we  detain  our  subject.  Plato,  Locke,  and  other 
philosophers  who  have  written  theoretically  concerning 
government,  failed  to  establish  any  conclusive  doctrine, 
only  because  they  busied  themselves  in  planning  con 
stitutions,  and  discussing  the  forms  of  government. 
Forms  must  be  the  birth  of  circumstances,  not  of  any 
abstract  or  absolute  doctrine.>  The  attempt  of  Locke, 
seated  in  his  study,-  to  produce  a  complete  frame  of 
government  for  South  Carolina,  was  one  of  signal  au 
dacity,  and  worthy  of  the  very  signal  defeat  it  met  in 
its  application. 

Civil  philosophy,  if  any  such  thing  is  possible,  must 
begin  with  a  definition  of  the  object  of  the  civil  state, 
and  confine  itself  to  adjusting  the  principles,  not  the 
forms,  by  which  that  object  may  be  secured.  There  is 
always  some  end  or  object,  some  good  pursued  by  a  state, 
which  determines  its  polity.  The  institutions  of  Lycur- 


48  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

gus,  for  example,  have  their  object  in  the  formation  of  a 
valorous  people.  The  Spartan  state,  accordingly,  never 
advances  in  wealth  or  in  the  arts,  never  becomes  a  truly 
polite  nation,  never  even  adds  to  her  empire  by  conquest. 
All  the  lines  of  her  history  and  polity  terminate  to 
gether  in  producing  a  den  of  lions.  The  Roman  state, 
in  like  manner,  concentrated  its  aim  on  the  pursuit  of 
empire,  and  no  bird  or  beast  of  prey  was  ever  more 
constant  to  its  instincts,  than  the  Roman  policy  to  its 
object,  till  it  achieved  the  dominion  of  the  world. 
Other  nations  have  pursued  objects  more  complex,  fall 
ing  of  course  into  systems  of  polity  equally  complex 
with  their  objects.  The  great  fundamental  question, 
then,  on  which  everything  in  civil  philosophy  hinges, 
is  to  determine  what  is  the  end  which  a  state  ought  to 
pursue,  or  in  what  the  true  greatness  and  felicity  of  a 
state  consists.  Which  makes  it  the  more  remarkable, 
that  almost  no  thought  has  been  expended  in  bringing 
this  question  to  a  definite  settlement.  Even  Lord  Bacon 
soberly  puts  forth  the  atrocious,  the  really  Satanic  doc 
trine,  "  that  it  is  the  principal  point  of  greatness,  in  any 
state,  to  have  a  race  of  military  men,  and  to  have  those 
laws  and  customs  which  may  reach  forth  unto  them  just 
occasions  (as  may  be  pretended)  of  war."  What  a  con 
ception  to  be  given  out  by  a  philosopher!  And  yet 
even  this  very  shocking  way  of  greatness  would  have, 
at  least,  the  merit  of  making  a  soldierly  and  manly  peo 
ple — -just  what  we  are  most  likely  to  miss  of  in  the 
present  drift  of  society.  For  it  is  the  really  shameful 
fact,  that  we  are  now  turning  our  policies  and  public 


OR     WEAL     OF    NATIONS.  49 

**•      > 

measures,  more  and  more,  on  questions  of  money  and 
trade ;  as  if  property  were  the  real  end  of  statesmanship. 
Since  the  words  weaWi  and  weal  are  brothers  of  the 
same  family,  many  appear  to  imagine  that  the  political 
economists,  Adam  Smith  and  his  disciples,  having  care 
fully  defined  that  national  wealth  which  is  to  be  the  end 
of  their  science,  have  therein  defined  that  national  weal 
which  is  the  true  end  of  statesmanship — a  mistake  that 
has  occurred  the  more  naturally,  that  the  general  deifi 
cation  of  money  begets  a  tendency  in  the  same  direction. 
And  so  it  comes  to  pass,  in  the  modern  school  of  na 
tions,  especially  in  those  that  have  conquered  to  them 
selves  the  great  principle  that  government  is  for  the 
good  of  the  governed,  that  their  evil  genius  seems  about 
to  plunge  them  into  the  miserable  delusion  of  confound 
ing  the  good  of  the  governed  with  money  and  posses 
sions  ;  and  so  to  rob  them  of  all  the  noble  advantages 
they  had  gained.  Ceasing  to  care,  any  more,  for  what 
the  people  are,  the  great  question  now  is,  what  they  are 
to  have  ?  Under  the  supposed  auspices  of  the  new  sci 
ence,  a  new  era  of  misgovernment  is  thus  inaugurated. 
And  the  danger  is  that  the  free  nations  so  called  will 
become  mercenary  as  free ;  nations  without  great  senti 
ments  or  great  men  ;  without  a  history ;  luxurious,  cor 
rupt,  and,  in  the  end,  miserable  enough  to  quite  match 
the  worst  ages  of  despotism. 

There  is,  besides,  in  the  new  science  of  political  econ 
omy,  careful  as  it  is  in  its  method,  and  apparently  un 
answerable  in  its  arguments,  an  immense  oversight, 
which  is  sure  to  be  discovered  by  its  final  effects  on  so- . 

5 


50  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

ciety,  and  to  quite  break  up  the  aspect  of  reality  it  has 
been  able  to  give  to  its  conclusions.  It  deifies,  in  fact, 
the  laws  of  trade ;  not  observing  that  there  is  a  whole 
side  of  society  and  human  life  which  does  not  trade, 
owns  no  laws  of  trade,  stands  superior  to  trade,  wields, 
in  fact,  a  mightier  power  over  the  public  prosperity  it 
self—just  because  it  reaches  higher  and  connects  with 
nobler  ends.  Could  these  price-current  philosophers 
only  get  a  whole  nation  of  bankers,  brokers,  factors, 
ship-owners  and  salesmen,  to  themselves,  they  would 
doubtless  make  a  paradise  of  it  shortly — only  there 
might  possibly  be  no  public  love  in  the  paradise,  no 
manly  temperance,  no  sense  of  high  society,  no  great 
orators,  leaders,  heroes. 

After  all  it  is  not  the  whole  question — this  question 
of  economy.  Suppose,  for  example,  that  some  very 
young  nation,  one  that  has  not  yet  run  itself  into  all 
manifold  industries  and  forms  of  creation,  like  the  older 
nations,  were  to  put  implicit  faith  in  the  new  science, 
and  consent  to  buy,  always,  what  she  can  cheaper  buy 
than  create ;  so  to  become,  in  fact,  a  producer  of  but 
one  article — cotton,  for  example,  or  wheat.  Such  a 
state  will  be  no  complete  creature,  like  a  body  whose 
breathing,  pulsing,  digesting,  assimilative,  and  a  hun 
dred  other,  processes,  all  play  into  each  other,  in  that 
wonderful  reciprocity  that  makes  a  full-toned  vital  or 
der,  but  it  will  be  like  a  body  having  only  a  single 
function.  It  will  be  low  in  organization.  It  will  have 
no  great  consciousness  and  scarcely  any  consciousness 
at  all.  For  it  has  no  relational  system  of  parts  and 


OR    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  51 

offices.  The  men  are  repetitions,  in  a  sense,  of  each 
other,  and  society  is  cotton,  or  wheat,  all  through — 
nothing  more.  Mind  is  dull,  impulse  morbid  and  unre 
liable.  There  is  no  great  feeling,  nothing  to  make 
either  a  history  of,  or  a  man.  Living  thus  a  thousand 
years,  the  nation  becomes  nothing  better  than  a  pro 
vincial  country  a  thousand  years  old.  Could  they  now 
sell  out  all  the  great  gains,  made  by  their  wise  trading 
economy,  and  buy,  for  such  a  price,  the  dear,  deep 
public  love  that  belongs  to  a  people  duly  manifolded 
in  their  works  and  productive  arts,  the  rich  gifts  of 
feeling  and  sentiment,  the  ennobled  state-consciousness, 
out  of  which  spring  the  soldiers  and  heroes,  the  orators 
and  poets,  and  the  great  days  of  a  great  people,  it 
would  be  just  the  wisest  trade  and  best  economy  they 
have  ever  known — best,  I  mean,  not  only  for  the  char 
acter  it  would  bring,  but  for  their  creative  energy 
and  even  for  the  total,  at  last,  of  their  wealth  itself. 
Nay,  if  they  would  only  march  disgustfully  out,  some 
day,  leaving  all  their  lands  and  properties  behind,  just 
to  get  rid  of  their  ineffable  commonness,  their  exodus, 
for  a  purpose  so  manly  and  so  truly  great,  would  even 
beat  the  exodus  of  Moses. 

What,  then,  it  is  time  for  us  to  ask,  is  that  wealth  of 
a  nation  which  includes  its  weal,  or  solid  well-being  ? 
that  which  is  the  end  of  all  genuine  policy,  and  all  true 
statesmanship  ?  It  consists,  I  answer,  in  the  total  value 
of  the  persons^of  the  people.  National  wealth  is  personal, 
not  material.  It  includes  the  natural  capacity,  the  in 
dustry,  the  skill,  the  science,  the  bravery,  the  loyalty, 


52  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

the  moral  and  religious  worth  of  the  people.  The 
wealth  of  a  nation  is  in  the  breast  of  its  sons.  This  is 
the  object  which,  accordingly  as  it  is  advanced,  is  sure 
to  bring  with  it  riches,  justice,  liberty,  strength,  stabil 
ity,  invincibility,  and  every  other  good;  or  which, 
being  neglected,  every  sort  of  success  and  prosperity  is 
but  accidental  and  deceitful. 

That  any  statesman  should  look  upon  the  persons  of 
his  countrymen  as  secondary,  in  consequence,  to  money 
and  possessions ;  or  that  he  should  not  value  the  reve 
nue  of  great  abilities  and  other  high  qualities  that  may 
be  developed  in  them, — vigor,  valor,  genius,  integrity, — 
above  any  other  possible  increase  or  advantage,  discloses 
a  sordid  view  of  state  policy,  and  reflects  on  the  people 
themselves,  in  a  manner  fit  to  be  resented.  "You  will 
confer,"  says  Epictetus,  "the  greatest  benefit  on  your 
city,  not  by  raising  the  roofs,  but  by  exalting  the  souls 
of  your  fellow-citizens ;  for  it  is  better  that  great  souls 
should  live  in  small  habitations,  than  that  abject  slaves 
should  burrow  in  great  houses."  It  is  not  difficult  to 
feel  the  justice  of  this  noble  declaration ;  for  it  is  not  a 
secret  to  any  one  of  mankind,  that  a  very  rich  man 
may  yet  be  a  very  insignificant  man,  a  very  unhappy 
man,  a  very  dishonorable  man, — nay,  that  he  must  be 
so,  if  he  has  lived  only  for  gain,  and  made  all  wisdom 
to  consist  in  economy.  To  understand  that  states  are 
made  up  of  individuals,  is  still  less  difficult.  Well  was 
it  that  the  sordid  god  of  gold  and  of  misers  was  placed 
under  ground ;  by  what  strange  mistake  is  he  to  be 
brought  up  now  and  installed  king  of  nations? 


OR    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  53 

The  truth,  which  I  assert,  and  which  seems  too  evi 
dent  to  require  any  formal  argument,  is  happily  illus 
trated  by  reference  to  the  Mexican  state,  as  contrasted 
with  our  own.  It  was  not  a  peaceful  band  of  emigrants 
or  exiles  who  landed  there  to  find  a  refuge,  and  a  place 
to  worship  God  according  to  their  own  consciences.  It 
was  not  the  Saxon  blood,  nor  the  British  mind,  filled 
with  the  determinate  principles  and  lofty  images  of 
freedom  enshrined  in  the  English  tongue.  They  came 
in  the  name  of  a  proud  empire,  armed  for  conquest  and 
extirpation.  The  infernal  tragedy  of  Guatemozin  was 
the  inaugural  scene  of  Mexican  justice.  They  loaded 
themselves  with  gold  and  silver.  They  rioted  in  plun 
der  and  spoil,  founded  nothing,  cherished  no  hope  of 
liberty,  practiced  no  kind  of  industry  but  extortion, 
erected  no  safeguards  of  morality.  What  is  the  result  ? 
"Worthless,  or  having  no  personal  value  in  themselves, 
there  has  grown  out  of  them  what  alone  could  grow ;  a 
nation  of  thriftless  anarchists  and  intriguers,  without 
money  at  the  very  mouth  of  their  mines,  without  char 
acter  abroad  or  government  at  home,  and  with  nothing 
to  hope  for  in  the  future,  better  than  they  have  suffered 
in  the  past.  How  striking  an  example,  to  show,  that 
neither  a  fine  country  nor  floods  of  gold  and  silver,  can 
make  a  nation  great,  without  greatness  in  the  breasts  of 
her  sons ! 

Revert  now  to  the  simple  beginnings  of  our  founders. 

-  They  brought  hither,  in  their  little  ships,  not  money, 

not  merchandise,   no  array  of  armed  force,  but  they 

came  freighted  with  religion,   learning,   law,   and  the 

5* 


54  THE    TEUE    WEALTH 

spirit  of  men.  They  stepped  forth  upon  the  shore,  and 
a  wild  and  frowning  wilderness  received  them.  Strong 
in  God  and  their  own  heroic  patience,  they  began  their 
combat  with  danger  and  hardship.  Disease  smote 
them,  but  they  fainted  not ;  famine,  but  they  feasted  on 
roots  with  a  patient  spirit.  They  built  a  house  for 
God,  then  for  themselves.  They  established  education 
and  the  observance  of  a  stern  but  august  morality,  then 
legislated  for  the  smaller  purposes  of  wealth  and  con 
venience.  They  gave  their  sons  to  God ;  through  him, 
to  virtue ;  and  through  virtue,  to  the  state.  So  they 
laid  the  foundations.  Soon  the  villages  began  to  smile, 
churches  arose  still  farther  in  the  depths  of  the  wilder 
ness,  industry  multiplied  her  hands,  colleges  were  es 
tablished,  the  beginnings  of  civil  order  completed  them 
selves  and  swelled  into  the  majesty  of  states.  And 
now,  behold,  the  germs  of  a  mighty  nation  are  mani 
fest — a  nation  of  law,  art,  industry,  and  power,  rushing 
on  a  career  of  expansion  never  equaled  in  the  history 
of  man !  What  addition,  we  are  now  tempted  to  ask, 
could  any  amount  of  wealth  have  made  to  the  real  force 
and  value  of  these  beginnings  ?  Or,  having  a  treasure 
in  her  sons,  what  is  there  beside,  whether  strength, 
growth,  riches,  or  anything  desirable,  which  a  state  can 
possibly  fail  of?  Wealth  is  but  the  shadow  of  men ; 
and  lordship  and  victory,  it  has  been  nobly  said,  are 
but  the  pages  of  justice  and  virtue. 

But  let  us  descend,  for  a  few  moments,  to  grounds  of 
mere  economy.  Let  it  be  granted,  that  wealth  is  the 
true  and  principal  object  of  state  polity.  I  am  anxious 


OK    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  55 

to  inquire,  how  wealth  is  to  be  created,  and  especially, 
in  what  form  wealth  is  to  be  accumulated.  It  would 
almost  seem  that  the  fancy  which  floats  so  delightfully 
before  the  minds  of  men,  in  their  pursuit  of  private 
gain,  must  throw  the  same  charm  over  national  wealth. 
The  state  is  to  become  prodigiously  rich,  they  seem  to 
imagine,  against  her  old  age ;  and  then  she  will  be  able, 
with  the  stock  laid  in,  to  support  her  great  family  at 
their  ease,  on  the  mere  interest  of  the  money.  But  how 
is  her  great  wealth  to  be  laid  up,  or  in  what  shape  ? 
Not  in  notes  and  bills,  certainly,  that  are  due  from  one 
to  another  within  the  nation ;  for  it  adds  nothing  to  the 
wealth  of  a  family,  that  one  of  the  sons  owes  another. 
Not  in  specie ;  for  gold  and  silver  are  good  for  nothing 
in  themselves,  but  only  as  they  will  buy  something  else. 
And  if  they  were  confined  within  the  nation,  and  not 
allowed  to  purchase  articles  from  abroad,  as  the  case 
supposes,  they  would  only  pass  from  hand  to  hand 
within  the  nation,  and  the  prices  of  all  articles  would 
be  raised,  according  to  the  plenty  there  is  of  gold  and 
silver.  Silver,  perhaps,  being  as  plenty  as  iron,  a  ton 
would  be  exchanged  for  a  ton  of  iron,  and  the  man  who 
owns  a  hundred  tons  of  it,  would  have  it  piled  up  in 
the  street — as  rich  as  he  now  is  with  a  few  thousand 
dollars,  and  no  more.  But  if  not  in  notes  and  bills,  not 
in  specie,  in  what  form  is  the  national  wealth  to  be  laid 
up?  In  a  cultivated  territory,  I  reply,  in  dwellings, 
roads,  bridges,  manufactories,  ships,  temples,  libraries, 
fortifications,  monuments; — things  which  add  to  the 
beauty,  comfort,  strength,  or  productiveness,  of  the  na- 


56  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

tion.  But  what  are  all  these  things,  but  the  products 
and  representatives  of  personal  quality  and  force  in  the 
people  ?  And  what  shall  ever  maintain  them  in  good 
keeping  or  repair,  but  such  quality  and  force  ?  Taken 
together,  they  are  scarcely  more  than  a  collection  of  the 
tools  of  industry  and  production  ;  and  if  a  nation,  with 
out  application,  or  skill,  or  such  a  state  of  morals  as 
permits  the  security  of  property,  were  to  receive  a 
country  ready  furnished  with  such  a  wealth,  the  pro 
ductive  farms  would  soon  be  impoverished,  the  towns 
decayed,  the  ships  rotten,  the  stands  of  art  and  machi 
nery  dilapidated  and  wrecked.  Only  change  the  qual 
ity  of  the  British  people  into  that  of  the  Mexican,  and 
five  years  would  make  their  noble  island  a  seat  of  pov 
erty  and  desolation.  Where  then  is  accumulation,  in 
what  form  is  wealth  to  be  laid  up,  but  in  the  personaL 
quality  and  value  of  the  people?  This  immaterial 
wealth,  too,  which  many  would  think  quite  unsubstan 
tial  in  its  nature,  is  really  more  imperishable  and  inde 
structible  by  far  than  any  other.  There  is  never  any 
amount  of  property  and  goods  laid  up  by  a  nation, 
which  the  mere  accident  of  a  war,  or  an  unsettled  gov 
ernment,  may  not  destroy,  in  a  few  years,  so  as  to  leave 
the  nation  virtually  poor.  But  immaterial  values,  such 
as  native  capacity,  attachment  to  home,  knowledge, 
skill,  courage,  and  the  like,  are  a  stock,  which  ages 
only  of  reverse  and  declension  can  utterly  consume. 
No  failure  of  commerce,  no  famine,  no  war  and  confla 
gration  desolating  the  land,  no  rapacity  of  conquest, 
can  reach  these  treasures.  Time  only,  with  all  his  le- 


OE    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  57 

gions  of  ruin,  can  slowly  master  them.  And  if,  per 
chance,  a  respite  should  be  given,  they  will  suddenly 
start  up  as  a  capital  that  had  been  invisible,  and,  in  a 
few  years,  fill  the  land  with  all  its  former  opulence. 

Take  another  aspect  of  the  subject.  The  great  foe  to 
wealth  which  statesmen  have  to  contend  with,  is  dead 
consumption — that  which  annihilates  value  without  re 
producing  it.  It  can  be  shown,  for  example,  from  un 
questionable  data,  that  fashionable  extravagance  in  our 
people,  such  as  really  transcends  their  means  to  a  de 
gree  that  is  not  respectable;  theatrical  amusements, 
known  to  be  only  corrupt  and  vulgar  in  character ;  to 
gether  with  intemperate  drinking,  and  all  the  idleness, 
crime,  and  pauperism,  consequent,  have  annihilated, 
since  we  began  our  history,  not  less  than  three  or  four 
times  the  total  wealth  of  the  nation.  This  dead  con 
sumption  is  the  great  cancer  of  destruction,  which  eats 
against  all  industry  and  production.  It  must  be  kept 
out,  or  cut  out,  or  the  flesh  must  be  more  than  supplied, 
else  there  is  no  advance  of  wealth.  Now  if  economy  is 
to  furnish  the  law  of  civil  administration,  as  according 
to  current  reasonings  it  is,  let  economy  provide  a  rem 
edy  against  this  all-devouring  and  fatal  consumption. 
And  since  it  originates  only  in  a  corruption  of  qualitv 
in  the  "people-1— in  a  want  of  simplicity,  temperance, 
providence,  and  good  manners — since  the  spendthrifts 
of  the  family  are  the  bad  sons,  let  the  statesman  take 
care  not  to  educate  spendthrift  sons.  Let  him  turn  his 
whole  attention  to  the  great  subject  of  preparing  a  just, 
provident,  industrious  people.  Let  him  spare  no  possi- 


58  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

ble  expense  for  this  object.  Let  him,  in  fact,  forget  all 
economy  in  his  devotion  to  higher  aims,  and  by  that 
time  he  will  be  a  consistent  and  thorough  economist. 

But  the  distribution  of  wealth  is  a  matter  of  more 
consequence  to  a  state  than  its  amount.  *When  the 
Eoman  state  was  at  the  height  of  its  wealth,  there  were 
not  more  than  twenty  landholders  in  Italy ;  the  rest  of 
the  people  were  dependents — an  idle,  thriftless,  profli 
gate  race,  ripe  for  every  possible  mischief  and  sedition. 
There  could  not  be  a  more  miserable  condition  in  any 
state ;  it  permitted  no  such  thing  as  character,  law,  se 
curity,  or  domestic  «omfort.  But  I  will  require  it  of 
any  statesman  to  show  how  a  more  equal  division  of 
property  'can  be  effected,  without  robbery,  unless  by 
means  of  intelligence,  application,  frugality,  devotion 
to  home  and  family,  in  the  breasts  of  the  people.  Let 
me  add,  that  the  changes  now  rapidly  taking  place  in 
New  England,  the  broad  and  partially  hostile  distinc 
tions  that  begin  to  display  themselves,  are  sad  omens, 
and  leave  us  no  time  to  squander  in  merely  economical 
policies. 

It  is  farther  to  be  noted,  that  the  wealth  of  a  nation 
must  be  defended,  as  well  as  constructed.  We  have 
not  yet  reached  the  day  when  mere  principles  of  equity 
are  a  sufficient  bulwark  to  nations.  Even  if  the  days 
of  absolute  conquest  are  past,  there  are  yet  a  thousand 
liabilities  to  violent  encroachments  on  the  honor  and 
rights  of  a  people,  which  they  can  not  be  passive  under, 
without  sacrificing  a  national  spirit,  and  well-nigh  dis- 
solvin^  the  bonds  of  government  itself.  But  where  lies 


OR    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  59 

the  strength  of  a  nation's  defense  ?  In  such  things  as 
money  purchases — ships,  fortifications,  and  magazines 
of  war?  No!  the  real  bulwarks  of  a  nation  are  the 
bodies  of  her  sons ;  or,  I  should  rather  say,  the  spirit 
and  principles  of  her  sons.  They  are  public  love,  wis 
dom,  and  high  command,  attachment  to  home,  and 
bravery.  Courage  is  necessary  to  the  spirit  and  true 
manhood  of  a  people,  though  pursuing  a  policy  even 
of  non-resistance.  And  true  courage  is  a  high  trait. 
It  is  not  to  be  bought  with  money,  not  to  be  inspired 
by  an  occasion.  It  can  not  be  infused  into  a  mean-bred 
and  sensual  people.  It  is  the  brother  in  arms  of  con 
scious  integrity.  In  its  highest  examples  it  is  super 
natural,  and  by  faith  in  God  waxes  valiant.  How 
often  has  the  single  sentiment  of  courage  been  worth 
more  to  a  people,  in  a  merely  economical  estimate,  than 
any  possible  amount  of  treasure  ? 

To  seek  farther  illustration  of  a  position  so  nearly 
self-evident  as  the  one  I  advance,  would  only  reflect 
suspicion  upon  it.  The  personal  value  of  a  people  is 
the  only  safe  measure  of  their  honor  and  felicity. 
Economy  holds  the  same  place  in  their  polity,  which  it 
holds  in  the  life  of  a  wise  and  great  man — a  subordi 
nate  place,  and  when  subordinate,  honorable.  But 
their  highest  treasures  as  a  state,  they  behold  in  capa 
ble  and  manly  bodies,  just  principles,  high  sentiments, 
intelligence,  and  genius.  To  cherish  these  in  a  people, 
to  provide  a  noble  succession  of  poets,  philosophers, 
lawgivers,  and  commanders,  who  shall  be  the  directing 
head,  and  the  nerves  of  action ;  to  compact  all  into  one 


60  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

energetic  and  stately  body  inspirited  by  public  love — 
this  is  the  noble  study  of  true  philosophic  statesman 
ship.  "Alas,  sir!"  exclaimed  Milton,  suddenly  grasp 
ing  this  whole  subject  as  with  divine  force,  "  a  common 
wealth  ought  to  be  but  as  one  huge  Christian  person 
age,  one  mighty  growth  and  stature  of  an  honest  man, 
as  big  and  compact  in  virtue  as  in  body ;  for  look, 
what  the  grounds  and  causes  are  of  single  happiness  to 
one  man,  the  same  ye  shall  find  them  to  a  wThole  state." 
Here,  in  a  single  sentence,  he  declares  the  true  idea  of 
a  state,  and  of  all  just  administration. 

But  however  correct  in  theory,  such  views,  it  will  be 
suspected,  are,  after  all,  remote  and  impracticable. 
How,  especially,  can  we  hope  to  bring  our  intractable 
democracy  upon  so  high  a  ground  of  principle  ?  I  can 
not  entirely  sympathize  with  such  impressions.  His 
tory  clearly  indicates  the  fact,  that  republics  are  more 
ductile  than  any  other  form  of  government,  and  more 
favorable  to  the  admission  of  high-toned  principles,  and 
the  severer  maxims  of  government.  The  confederate 
republics  of  Crete,  and  the  daughter  republic  of  Sparta, 
were  no  other  than  studied  and  rigorous  systems  of 
direct  personal  discipline  upon  the  people,  in  which 
wealth  and  ease  were  in  no  wise  sought,  but  sternly 
rejected.  And  in  what  monarchy,  or  even  despotism, 
of  the  world,  where  but  in  plain  republican  Rome,  the 
country  of  Cato  and  Brutus,  is  a  censor  of  manners  and 
morals  to  be  endured,  going  forth  with  his  note-book, 
and  for  any  breach  of  parental  or  filial  duty  observed, 
for  seduction  of  the  youth,  for  dishonor  in  the  field,  for 


OR    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  61 

a  drinking  bout,  or  even  for  luxurious  manners,  inflict 
ing  a  civil  degradation  upon  the  highest  citizens  and 
magistrates  ?  The  beginnings,  too,  of  our  own  history, 
are  of  the  same  stern  temperament,  and  such  as  per 
fectly  to  sympathize  with  the  highest  principles  of  gov 
ernment.  Indeed  I  have  felt  it  to  be,  in  the  highest  de 
gree,  auspicious,  that  the  ground  I  vindicate  before 
you  requires  no  revolution,  being  itself  the  true  Amer 
ican  ground.  May  we  not  also  discover  even  now,  in 
the  worst  forms  of  radicalism  and  political  depravation 
among  us,"  a  secret  elemental  force,  a  law  of  republican 
feeling,  which,  if  appealed  to  on  high  and  rigid  prin 
ciples,  would  yield  a  true  response?  We  fail  in  our 
conservative  attempts,  more  because  our  principles  are 
too  low,  than  because  they  are  too  high.  A  course  of 
administration,  based  on  the  pursuit  of  wealth  alone, 
though  bad  in  principle  anywhere,  is  especially  bad  in 
a  republic.  It  is  more  congenial  to  the  splendors  and 
stately  distinctions  of  monarchy.  It  concentrates  the 
whole  attention  of  the  nation  upon  wealth.  It  requires 
measures  to  be  debated  only  as  they  bear  upon  wealth. 
It  produces  thus  a  more  egregious  notion  of  its  dignity, 
continually,  both  in  the  minds  of  those  who  have  it, 
and  of  those  who  have  it  not,  and  thus  it  exasperates 
every  bad  feeling  in  a  republic,  till  it  retaliates  destruc 
tion  upon  it.  But  a  system  of  policy,  based  on  the 
high  and  impartial  principles  of  philosophy,  one  that 
respects  only  manly  bodies,  high  talents,  great  senti 
ments  and  actions,  one  that  values  excellence  of  person, 
whether  found  in  the  palaces  of  the  rich* or  the  huts  of 


62  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

the  poor,  holding  all  gilded  idleness  and  softness  in  the 
contempt  they  deserve — such  a  system  is  congenial  to 
a  republic.  It  would  have  attractions  to  our  people. 
Its  philosophic  grounds,  too,  can  be  vindicated  by  a 
great  variety  of  bold  arguments,  and  the  moral  absurd 
ity  of  holding  wealth  in  higher  estimation  than  personal 
value,  can  be  played  out  in  the  forms  of  wit  and  satire, 
so  as  to  raise  a  voice  of  acclamation,  and  overwhelm  the 
mercenary  system  with  utter  and  final  contempt. 

I  ought  to  say,  that  no  constitutional  change  in  our 
system  is  requisite  or  contemplated.  It  is  only  neces 
sary  that  we  sustain  the  distinctness  and  high  independ 
ence  of  the  state  governments.  The  general  govern 
ment  is  mainly  fiscal  and  prudential  in  its  sphere  of 
action.  The  highest  and  most  sacred  duties  belong  to 
the  individual  states.  It  is  the  exact  and  appropriate 
sphere  of  these,  to  prepare  personal  wealth  in  the  peo 
ple.  They  should  be  as  little  absorbed,  therefore,  as 
possible,  in  the  spirit  and  policy  of  the  general  govern 
ment.  Each  state  should  have  the  interest,  in  itself,  of 
a  family,  a  sense  of  character  to  sustain,  a  love  of  its 
ancestors  and  its  children,  a  just  ambition  to  raise  its 
quota  of  distinguished  men,  to  be  honored  for  its  litera 
ture,  its  good  manners,  and  the  philosophic  beauty  of 
its  disciplinary  institutions. 

But  let  us  glance  at  some  of  the  practical  operations 
of  our  doctrine  more  particularly.  The  personal  value 
of  the  people  being  the  great  object  of  pursuit,  the  first 
care  of  a  state  will  of  course  be  to  preserve  and  ennoble 
the  native  quaHty  or  stock  of  its  people.  It  is  a  well- 


OR    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  63 

known  principle  of  physiology,  that  cultivation,  bodily, 
and  mental,  and  all  refinements  of  disposition  and  prin 
ciple  do  gradually  work,  to  increase  the  native  volume 
and  elevate  the  quality  of  a  people.  It  is  by  force  of 
this  principle,  long  operating,  that  states  occupying  a 
similar  climate  have  become  so  different  in  tempera 
ment,  talent,  and  quality  of  every  kind.  In  this  prin 
ciple,  a  field  of  promise  truly  sublime  opens  on  the 
statesmen  of  a  country.  And  yet,  I  know  not  that 
more  than  two  or  three  lawgivers  ever  made  the  ennob 
ling  of  their  stock  a  subject  of  practical  attention.  The 
free  mingling  and  crossing  of  races  in  the  higher  ranges 
of  culture  and  character  would  doubtless  be  a  great 
benefit  to  the  stock.  But  the  constant  importation,  as 
now,  to  this  country,  of  the  lowest  orders  of  people  from 
abroad,  to  dilute  the  quality  of  our  natural  manhood,  is 
a  sad  and  beggarly  prostitution  of  the  noblest  gift  ever 
conferred  on  a  people.  Who  shall  respect  a  people, 
who  do  not  respect  their  own  blood  ?  And  how  shall 
a  national  spirit,  or  any  determinate  and  proportionate 
character,  arise  out  of  so  many  low-bred  associations 
and  coarse-grained  temperaments,  imported  from  every 
clime  ?  It  was  in  keeping,  that  Pan,  who  was  the  son 
of  every  body,  was  the  ugliest  of  the  gods.  It  is  well 
known,  too,  that  vices  and  degraded  manners  have  a 
sad  effect  in  sinking  the  quality  of  a  people.  We  hear 
of  one  whole  people,  who  are  in  danger  of  dwindling 
to  absolute  extinction,  by  force  of  this  simple  cause. 
And  let  the  day  but  come  to  any  people,  when  it  is 
true  that  every  man  participates  in  the  infected  blood 


64  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

of  drunkenness,  or  any  corrupt  vice,  and  it  will  be  a 
people  as  certainly  degenerate,  to  some  degree,  in  bod 
ily  stature  and  force,  in  mental  quickness  and  gener 
osity.  Do  I  then  speak  of  enforcing  morals  by  law  ? 
Certainly  I  do.  Only  a  decent  respect  for  the  blood  of 
the  nation  requires  it.  But  the  punishments  declared 
against  such  vices  as  poison  the  blood  of  a  nation, 
ought  to  be  suitable ;  they  ought  to  be  such  as  denote 
only  contempt.  If  it  would  be  too  severe,  in  the  man 
ner  of  an  ancient  Roman  punishment,  to  inclose  the  de 
linquent  in  a  sack,  with  some  appropriate  animals,  and 
throw  him  into  the  water,  let  him  somehow  be  made  a 
mark  for  mockery  and  derision.  But  let  there  be  no 
appearance  of  austerity  in  the  laws  against  vice.  Let 
cheerful  and  happy  amusements  be  provided,  at  the 
public  expense.  Let  the  youth  be  exercised  in  feats  of 
agility  and  grace,  in  rowing  and  the  spirited  art  of 
horsemanship.  Erect  monuments  and  fountains,  adorn 
public  walks  and  squares,  arrange  oranamental  and  sci 
entific  gardens,  institute  festivals  and  games  for  the  con 
test  of  youth  and  manhood  in  practical  invention,  in 
poetry,  philosophy,  and  bodily  prowess.  Provide  ways 
and  means,  go  to  any  expense,  to  enliven  the  state  and 
make  the  people  happy,  without  low  and  vulgar  pleas 
ures.  The  sums  now  expended,  every  year,  in  a  single 
article  of  appetite  and  of  dead  consumption,  would  de 
fray  every  expense  of  this  kind.  In  the  same  view, 
great  cities  will  not  be  specially  desired,  and  all  confined 
employments  will  be  obviated,  as  far  as  possible.  For  it 
is  not  in  great  cities,  nor  in  the  confined  shops  of  trade, 


*OR    WEAL    OF    NAT  IONS.  65 

but  principally  in  agriculture,  that  the  best  stock  or 
staple  of  men  is  grown.  It  is  in  the  open  air,  in  com 
munion  with  the  sky,  the  earth,  and  all  living  things, 
that  the  largest  inspiration  is  drunk  in,  and  the  vital 
energies  of  a  real  man  constructed.  The  modern  im 
provements  in  machinery  have  facilitated  production  to 
such  a  degree,  that  when  they  become  diffused  through 
the  world,  only  a  few  hands,  comparatively,  will  be 
requisite  in  the  mechanic  arts;  and  those  engaged  in 
agriculture,  being  proportionally  more  numerous,  will 
be  more  in  a  condition  of  ease.  Here  opens  a  new  and 
sublime  hope.  If  a  state  can  maintain  the  practice  of  a 
pure  morality,  and  can  unite  with  agriculture  a  taste 
for  learning  and  science,  and  the  generous  exercises  I 
have  named,  a  race  of  men  will  ultimately  be  raised  up, 
having  a  physical  volume,  a  native  majesty  and  force 
of  mind,  such  as  no  age  has  yet  produced.  Or  if  this 
be  not  done,  if  the  race  are  to  sink  down  into  idleness 
and  effeminate  pleasures,  as  production  is  facilitated, 
the  great  inventions  we  prize  will  certainly  result  in  a 
dwarfed  and  degraded  staple  of  manhood. 

Pass,  now,  from  the  subject  of  native  quality  and  ca 
pacity,  to  that  of  personal  and  moral  improvement. 
God  has  given  eyes  to  the  body  of  man,  by  which  to 
govern  his  feet  and  guide  his  other  motions.  So  he  has 
given  to  the  mind  a  regulative  eye — a  faculty,  whose 
very  office  it  is  to  command  all  the  others.  But,  sup 
pose  some  one  to  busy  himself  in  devising  a  system  by 
which  men  shall  be  enabled  to  walk  by  the  sense  of 
smell  or  of  touch.  It  were  not  a  more  absurd  ingenu- 

6* 


Ob  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

ity,  than  to  attempt  a  state  policy  which  shall  govern 
men  through  their  appetites,  or  their  love  of  gain,  or 
their  mere  fears.  The  conscience  must  be  entered,  or 
der  and  principle  must  be  established  in  the  seat  of 
the  soul's  regency ;  and  then  a  conservative  and  genial 
power  will  flow  down  thence  on  every  other  faculty 
and  disposition,  every  frame  of  bodily  habit,  every  em 
ployment  and  enterprise,  and  the  whole  body  of  the 
state  will  rise  with  invigorate  thrift  and  full  proportion 
in  every  part.  To  this  end,  a  state  must  be  grounded 
in  religion.  Though  not  established  as  a  part  of  the 
political  system,  it  must  be  virtually  incorporate  in  the 
principles  and  feelings  of  the  people.  If  it  were  possi 
ble  for  a  people  to  subsist  without  some  kind  of  relig 
ion,  it  would  be  a  mere  subsistence — without  morals, 
without  a  true  public  enthusiasm,  without  genius,  or  an 
inspired  literature.  The  highest  distinction  they  could 
possibly  attain  to,  would  be  the  advancement  of  mate 
rial  philosophy.  Being  worshipers  of  matter,  they 
might  be  good  observers  of  matter,  but  only  in  the 
lower  and  individual  aspects  of  things;  the  Higher 
Eeason,  which  dictates  all  material  forms  and  relations, 
and  dwells  in  them,  they  could  not  perceive.  "  They 
that  deny  a  God,"  says  Bacon,  "  destroy  man's  nobility ; 
for,  certainly,  man  is  of  kin  to  the  beasts  by  his  body, 
and  if  he  be  not  of  kin  to  God  by  his  spirit,  he  is  a  base 
and  ignoble  creature.  It  destroys  likewise  magnanim 
ity  and  the  raising  of  human  nature ;  for  take  an  exam 
ple  of  a  dog,  and  mark  what  a  courage  and  generosity 
he  will  put  on,  when  he  finds  himself  maintained  by  a 


OK    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  67 

man,  who  to  him  is  instead  of  a  God ;  which  courage  is 
manifestly  such  as  that  creature,  without  that  confi 
dence  of  a  better-  nature  than  his  own,  could  never  at 
tain."  This  confidence  of  a  better  nature  is  religious 
faith ;  and  here  it  is  that  man  begins  to  look  beyond 
mere  sense  and  outward  fact  in  his  thoughts.  And  in 
this  point  of  view,  religion  is  seen  to  be  the  spring  of  all 
genius.  Genius  is  but  an  intellectual  faith.  It  looks 
round  on  the  world  and  life,  and  beholds  not  a  limit,  in 
some  sense,  not  a  reality ;  but  the  confidence,  in  all,  of 
a  better  nature.  The  forms,  colors,  and  experiences  of 
life,  are  not  truth  to  it,  but  only  the  imagery  of  truth. 
Boundaries  break  way,  thought  is  emancipated,  a 
mighty  inspiration  seizes  and  exalts  it ;  and  what  to 
others  is  fact  and  dead  substance,  to  it  is  but  a  vast 
chamber  of  spiritual  imagery.  Colors  are-  the  hues  of 
thought,  forms  embody  it,  contrasts  hold  it  in  relief, 
proportions  are  the  clothing  of  its  beauty,  sounds  are 
its  music.  Whose  the  thought  is,  its  own  reflected,  or 
God's  presented,  it  may  never  pause  to  inquire;  or 
with  the  immortal  Kepler,  it  may  exclaim,  in  the  pious 
ecstasy  of  a  child — 0  Lord,  I  think  thy  thoughts  after 
thee!  In  either  case,  the  world  is  changed — it  is  no 
more  the  whole,  but  only  the  sign  of  things.  The 
blank  walls  of  sense  are  become  significant,  and  a 
world  beyond  the  world  is  beheld  in  distinct  embody  - 
ment. 

Nearly  allied  to  religion,  as  a  power  ennobling  man, 
is  reverence  for  ancestors.  There  is  something  essen 
tially  bad  in  a  people  who  despise  or  do  not  honor  their 


68  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

originals.      A  state  torn  from  its  beginnings  is  frag 
mentary,  incapable  of  public  love,  or  of  any  real  na 
tionality.     No  such  people  were  ever  known  to  develop 
a  great  character.     Eome  was  not  ashamed  to  own  that 
she  sprung  of  refugees  and  robbers,  and  boasted,   in 
every  age,  her  old  seer  Numa  who  gave  her  laws  and  a 
religion.      Athens  could  glory  in  the  fiction  that  her 
ancestors  were  grasshoppers,  sprung  out  of  the  earth  as 
an  original  race.     England  has  never  blushed  to  name 
her  noble  families  from  the  Danish  or  Saxon  pirates 
who  descended  on  her  coast.     Piety  to  God,  and  piety 
to  ancestors,  are  the  only  force  which  can  impart  an  or 
ganic  unity  and  vitality  to  a  state.     Torn  from  the  past 
and  from  God,  government  is  but  a  dead  and  brute  ma 
chine.     Its  laws  take  hold  of  nothing  in  man  which  re 
sponds  ;  they  are  only  paper  decrees,  made  by  the  men 
of  yesterday,  which  the  men  of  to-day  have  as  good 
right  to  put  under  their  feet.     What  is  it  which  gives 
to  the  simple  enactment  of  words  written  on  paper,  the 
force  of  law — a  power  to  sway  and  mould  a  mighty  na 
tion  ?     Is  it  the  terror  of  force  ?      Why  does  not  all 
force  disclaim  it  ?     Is  it  that  some  constituted  body  of 
magistrates  enacts  it?      But  how  do  the  magistrates 
themselves  become  subject  to  it,  in  the  very  act  of  pro 
nouncing  it,  as  if  it  were  uttered  by  some  authority 
higher  than  they?     This  is  the  only  answer:  Law  is 
uttered  by  the  National  Life — not  by  some  monarch, 
magistrate,  or  legislature,  of  to-day,  or  of  any  day,  but 
by  the  state ;    by  that  organic  force  of  which  kings, 
magistrates,  legislatures,  of  all  times,  have  been  but  the 


OR    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  69 

hands,  and  feet,  and  living  instruments;  that  force 
which  has  grown  up  from  small  and  perilous  begin 
nings,  strengthened  itself  in  battles,  spoken  in  the 
voices  of  orators  and  poets,  and  been  hallowed  at  the 
altars  of  religion.  Glorious  and  auspicious  distinction 
it  is,  therefore,  that  we  have  an  ancestry,  who,  after 
every  possible  deduction,  still  overtop  the  originals  of 
every  nation  of  mankind — men  fit  to  be  honored  and 
held  in  reverence  while  the  continent  endures. 

I  have  not  time  to  show  in  what  way  religion  and  a 
suitable  reverence  to  ancestors  may  be  promoted  in  our 
state  and  nation.  If  only  a  due  sense  of  their  dignity 
and  necessity  were  felt,  the  means  would  not  be  difficult 
to  reach.  Only  let  every  statesman,  or  magistrate, 
honor  religion  in  his  private  life ;  let  him  say  nothing, 
in  his  speech  publicly,  to  reflect  on  the  sacredness  of 
religion ;  make  no  appeal  to  passions  inconsistent  with 
it  in  the  people — by  that  time  wisdom  will  find  out 
ways  to  do  all  which  is  necessary.  So  let  every  public 
man  who  has  profaned  the  ashes  of  his  ancestors,  ex 
ulted  in  sweeping  down  their  safeguards  and  landmarks, 
and  excited  the  ignorant  people  to  a  prejudice  against 
them,  degrading  to  themselves  and  destructive  to  public 
love — let  him,  I  say,  cease  from  his  crime,  and  receive 
better  feelings  to  his  heart.  And  there,  in  the  place 
where  Washington  sleeps,  let  the  statesman  who  denies 
a  monument  because  it  is  an  expense,  fall  down  and 
draw  from  the  hallowed  earth,  if  he  may,  some  breath 
of  justice  and  magnanimity.  Beginning  thus,  I  trust 
we  might  not  cease  till  every  spot  signalized  in  our  his- 


70  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

tory  is  marked  by  some  honorable  token  of  national  re 
membrance. 

There  is  not  a  nobler  office  for  a  state,  than  the  edu 
cation  of  its  youth,  or  one  more  congenial  to  a  just  am 
bition.  Abandoning  the  mercenary  and  merely  eco 
nomical  policy,  and  ascending  to  higher  views,  it  will 
behold  its  richest  mines  in  the  capabilities  of  its  sons 
and  daughters.  Upon  the  cultivation  of  these  it  will 
concentrate  the  main  force  of  its  polity,  and  will  pro 
duce  to  itself  a  glorious  revenue  of  judges,  senators, 
and  commanders ;  wives  to  adorn  and  strengthen  the 
spheres  of  great  men;  citizens  who  will  make  every 
scene  of  life  and  every  work  of  industry  to  smile.  Oh ! 
I  blush,  for  once,  to  think  of  my  country !  It  has  gone 
abroad — we  ourselves  have  declared — that  we  are  an 
enlightened  people.  And  doubtless  a  republican  na 
tion,  one  too  that  has  filled  the  world  with  its  name, 
must  be  a  nation  of  special  culture.  Supppse  a  commis 
sioner  were  sent  out  from  some  one  of  the  venerable 
kingdoms  of  the  old  world,  to  examine  and  report  upon 
our  admirable  systems  of  schools.  First  of  all,  he  will 
say,  when  he  returns,  I  found  in  America  no  system  of 
schools  at  all,  and  scarcely  a  system  in  any  one  school. 
I  ascertained,  that  in  four  states  adjacent  to  each  other, 
there  were  more  children  out  of  school  than  in  all  the 
kingdom  of  Prussia.  Traveling  through  New  England, 
which  is  noted  for  its  schools,  I  observed  that  the  school- 
houses  were  the  most  comfortless  and  mean -looking 
class  of  buildings,  placed  in  the  worst  situations,  with 
out  shades  or  any  attraction  to  mitigate  their  barbarity. 


OR    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  71 

Into  these  dirty  shops  of  education,  the  sons  and 
daughters  are  driven  to  be  taught.  I  found,  on  in 
quiry,  that  a  man,  for  example,  who  would  give  a 
cheap  sort  of  lawyer  from  ten  to  twenty  dollars  for  a 
few  hours'  service,  is  giving  the  professor  of  education 
from  one  to  two  dollars  for  a  whole  winter's  work  on 
the  mind  of  his  son.  On  the  whole,  I  found  that  the 
Americans  were  very  providently  engaged  in  planting 
live  oak  timber  for  the  service  of  their  navy  in  future 
generations,  but  I  did  not  discover  that  they  had  any 
particular  concern,  just  now,  about  soldiers,  command 
ers,  and  magistrates  for  the  coming  age.  The  picture 
is,  alas !  too  just.  Indeed,  the  public  are  not  altogether 
insensible  to  these  things.  I  hear  them  often  com 
plained  of  by  those  who  do  not  seem  to  understand 
that  they  are  only  the  legitimate  fruit  of  their  own 
principles.  What  other  result  could  possibly  appear, 
in  a  country  whose  policy  itself  is  only  concerned  with 
questions  of  loss  and  gain  ? 

A  national  literature  consummates  and  crowns  the 
greatness  of  a  people.  The  best  actions,  indeed,  and 
the  highest  personal  virtues,  are  scarcely  possible,  till 
the  inspiring  force  of  a  literature  is  felt.  There  can 
not  even  be  a  high  tone  of  general  education  without  a 
literature.  A  state  must  have  its  renowned  orators  and 
senators ;  the  spirit  of  its  laws  and  customs  must  be  de 
veloped  in  a  venerable  body  of  judicial  learning;  its 
constitutions  must  have  been  clothed  with  gravity  and 
authority  by  the  admiration  of  philosophers  and  wise 
men;  its  beginnings,  its  great  actions,  its  fields  of 


72  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

honor,  the  names  of  its  lakes,  rivers,  and  mountains, 
must  have  been  consecrated  in  song ;  then  the  nation 
becomes,  as  it  were,  conscious  of  itself,  and  one,  because 
there  is  a  spirit  in  it  which  the  men  of  every  class  and 
opinion,  nay,  the  earth  and  the  air,  participate.  But, 
alas  I  there  must  be  something  of  true  manhood  and 
spiritual  generosity,  to  produce  such  a  literature.  A 
mercenary  mind  is  incapable  of  true  inspiration.  The 
spirit  of  gain  is  not  the  spirit  of  song ;  and  philosophers 
will  not  be  heard  discoursing  in  the  groves  of  paper 
cities.  Besides,  had  our  country  been  pursuing,  as  it 
ought,  the  noble  policy  of  producing  its  wealth  in  the 
persons  of  its  people,  those  relaxations  by  which  the 
right  of  suffrage  has  been  put  into  the  hands  of  the 
unworthy,  would  never  have  been  made.  And  then, 
after  they  were  made,  our  most  cultivated  citizens 
would  not  have  withdrawn  from  their  country  so 
despairingly;  they  would  have  come  forward,  in  the 
spirit  of  public  devotion,  and  contributed  all  their 
energies  to  the  noble  purpose  of  making  our  whole 
people,  since  they  are  called  to  rule,  fit  to  rule.  They 
would  even  have  consoled  themselves  in  that  which 
they  had  feared,  by  the  discovery  of  a  philosophic  ne 
cessity,  that  their  country,  at  whatever  sacrifice,  should 
be  completely  torn  from  British  types,  in  order  to  be 
come  a  truly  distinct  nation.  Least  of  all,  would  the 
best  talents  of  the  nation  have  lent  themselves  to  the 
task  of  soberly  reasoning  out  discouragement  to  our  in 
stitutions,  because  they  are  not  supported  by  noble  and 
priestly  orders.  The  worst  radicalism  which  our  coun- 


OR    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  73 

try  has  ever  suffered,  lias  been  this,  which,  under  the 
guise  of  a  sickly  and  copied  conservatism,  has  discour 
aged  all  nationality,  by  demanding  for  the  state  that 
which  is  radically  opposed  to  its  fundamental  elements, 
and  which  God  and  nature  haye  sternly  denied.  A  na 
tion  must  be  distinct,  and  must  respect  itself  as  distinct 
from  all  others,  else  it  can  not  adorn  itself  with  a  litera 
ture,  or  attain  to  any  kind  of  excellence.  And,  in  this 
view,  the  most  efficient  promoter  and  patron  of  Ameri 
can  literature,  is  that  man  who  has  honored  the  consti 
tution  of  his  country  by  the  noble  stature  of  his  opin 
ions  and  his  eloquence ;  who  has  stood  calm  and  self- 
collected  in  the  midst  of  factious  doctrines  and  corrupt 
measures  on  every  side,  and  whose  voice  has  been 
heard  in  the  darkest  hours,  speaking  words  of  encour 
agement  and  hope  to  his  countrymen.  Fully  impressed 
with  the  grandeur  of  the  British  state  and  constitution, 
and  copiously  enriched  himself  by  the  wealth  of  British 
literature,  he  has  yet  dared  to  renounce  a  state  of  cli- 
ency,  and  be,  in  a  sense,  the  first  American.  It  is  only 
needed  now,  that  a  voice  of  faith  should  break  out  in 
our  colleges  and  halls  of  learning,  and  that  our  consti 
tutions  be  set  forth  in  their  real  grounds,  and  vindicated 
by  a  philosophy  strongly  and  truly  American,  to  hasten 
wonderfully  the  day  of  our  literature.  And  the  tokens 
are,  that  we  must  have  a  literature,  not  scholastic  or 
cosmopolitan,  like  that  of  Germany,  which  is  the  litera 
ture  of  leisure  and  seclusion ;  but  one  that  is  practical 
and  historical,  one  that  is  marked  by  a  distinct  nation 
ality,  like  the  Athenian  and  the  British ;  one,  too,  it 

7 


74  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

must  be,  of  vast  momentum  in  its  power  on  the  world. 
It  will  be  eloquence,  humor,  satire,  song,  and  philoso 
phy,  flowing  on  with  and  around  our  history.  And  as 
our  history  is  to  be  a  struggle  after  the  true  idea  and 
settlement  of  liberty,  so  our  literature  will  partake  in 
the  struggle.  It  will  be  the  American  mind  wrestling 
with  itself,  to  obtain  the  true  doctrine  of  civil  freedom ; 
overwhelming  demagogues  and  factions,  exposing  usurp 
ations,  exploding  licentious  opinions,  involved  in  the 
fearful  questions  which  slavery  must  engender,  borne, 
perhaps,  at  times,  on  the  high  waves  of  revolution,  re 
clining  at  peace  in  the  establishment  of  order  and  jus 
tice,  and  deriving  lessons  of  wisdom  from  the  conflicts  of 
experience.  As  American  and  characteristic,  it  will  re 
volve  about  and  will  ever  be  attracted  towards  one  and 
the  same  great  truth,  whose  authority  it  will  gradually 
substantiate,  and,  I  trust,  will  at  length  practically  en 
throne  in  the  spirit  and  opinions  of  our  people.  This 
truth  is  none  other  than,  that  LIBERTY  is  JUSTICE  SE 
CURED.  Establishing  this  truth  in  a  general  and  per 
manent  authority,  which  I  trust  it  may  do  in  the  very 
process  of  investing  the  same  with  a  glorified  body  in 
letters,  it  will  bring  our  history  to  a  full  consummation. 
It  will  place  our  nation  on  the  same  high  platform  with 
the  divine  government,  which  knows  no  liberty  other 
than  law ;  and  there  it  shall  stand  immortal,  because  it 
has  found  the  rock  of  immortal  principle. 

But  I  must  close.     I  have  detained  you  too  long,  and 
yet  I  have  only  touched  on  a  few  points  in  this  vast 


OR    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  75 

subject,  and  with  studied  brevity.  When  I  think  of 
the  amount  of  talent  assembled  here,  in  this  honorable 
society,  and  in  the  numerous  band  of  young  men  pre 
paring  here  to  act  a  part  in  their  country,  a  feeling  of 
duty  constrains  me  to  address  you  personally.  May  I 
not  hope,  that  the  principle  I  have  asserted,  approves 
itself  to  the  sober  and  serious  conviction  of  your  judg 
ment?  And  have  you  not  some  generous  kindlings  of 
desire  and  purpose  stirring  in  your  breasts,  that  move 
you  to  be  advocates  and  champions  for  your  county, 
in  a  cause  of  so  great  honor  ?  Feel,  in  every  place  and 
station,  that  you  defraud  your  country,  and,  worse  than 
this,  defraud  the  honor  of  your  own  mind,  if  you  do  not 
resist,  and,  on  every  proper  occasion,  denounce  every 
merely  mercenary  scheming  policy  of  government. 
Eemind  your  countrymen  of  their  persons,  and  the  no 
bler  wealth  of  the  mind.  A  field  is  open  before  you, 
wherein  to  win  a  just  and  holy  renown.  Be  not  afraid 
to  be  republicans.  Be  not  afraid  of  a  principle.  He 
who  has  a  principle  is  inspired.  Doubtless  there  is 
some  difficulty  in  swaying  the  opinions  and  prejudices 
of  our  people.  But  the  worst  impediment  truth  has 
ever  had  to  complain  of,  in  our  country,  has  been  in 
its  spiritless  and  distrustful  advocates.  There  needs  to 
be  a  certain  exaltation  of  courage  and  inspired  perti 
nacity  in  the  advocates  of  truth.  She  must  not  be  dis 
trusted,  or  cloaked  in  disguises  and  accommodations. 
She  must  go  before,  in  full  unsoiled  whiteness,  and  the 
majesty  and  spirit  of  her  gait  must  invigorate  her  fol 
lowers.  Truth  is  the  daughter  of  God.  He  possessed 


76  THE    TRUE    WEALTH 

her  in  the  beginning  of  his  way.  Silence  is  her  voice. 
The  charmed  orbs  hear  it  forever,  and,  following  and 
revolving,  do  but  transcribe  her  word.  The  masses 
and  central  depths  also  know  her  presence,  and  the 
gems  sparkle  before  her  in  their  secret  places.  The 
buried  seeds  and  roots  inwardly  know  her,  and  pencil 
ing  their  flowers  and  preparing  their  several  fragrances, 
send  them  up  to  bloom  and  exhale  around  her.  She 
penetrates  all  things.  Not  laws,  not  bars,  nor  walls, 
can  exclude  her  goings.  Even  prejudice,  and  the  mad 
ness  of  the  people,  which  can  not  look  upon  her  face, 
do  yet  behold  her  burnished  feet  with  secret  amaze 
ment.  Understanding,  then,  that  truth  is  almighty,  let 
us  become  her  interpreters  and  prophets.  Have  faith 
in  truth.  Install  her  in  the  affections  of  your  youth, 
consecrate  to  her  all  your  talents,  and  the  full  vigor  of 
your  lives,  and  be  assured  that  she  will  in  no  wise  per 
mit  you  to  fail ;  she  will  fill  you  with  peace  and  lead 
you  to  honor. 

In  the  principles  I  have  now  asserted,  I  have  a  full 
and  immutable  confidence.  They  are  true  principles. 
They  have  power  to  impress  themselves.  They  only 
want'  enthusiasm  to  worship  them,  voices  to  speak 
them,  minds  to  reason  for  them,  and  courage  steadfast 
and  resolute  to  maintain  them,  and  having  these  they 
can  not  fail  to  reign. 

And  in  that,  I  see  the  dawn  of  a  new  and  illustrious 
vision.  I  see  the  nation  rising  from  its  present  depres 
sion,  with  a  chastened  but  good  spirit.  I  see  education 
beginning  to  awake,  a  spirit  of  sobriety  ruling  in  busi- 


OR    WEAL    OF    NATIONS.  77 

riess  and  in  manners,  religion  animated  in  her  heavenly 
work,  a  higher  self-respect  invigorating  our  institutions, 
and  the  bonds  of  our  country  strengthened  by  a  holier 
attachment.  Our  eagle  ascends  and  spreads  his  wings 
abroad  from  the  eastern  to  the  western  ocean.  A  hun 
dred  millions  of  intelligent  and  just  people  dwell  in  his 
shadow.  Churches  are  sprinkled  throughout  the  whole 
field.  The  sabbath  sends  up  its  holy  voice.  The  seats 
of  philosophers  and  poets  are  distinguished  in  every 
part,  and  hallowed  by  the  affections  of  the  people. 
The  fields  smile  with  agriculture.  The  streams,  and 
lakes,  and  all  the  waters  of  the  world,  bear  the  riches 
of  their  commerce.  The  people  are  elevated  in  stature, 
both  mental  and  bodily;  they  are  happy,  orderly, 
brave,  and  just,  and  the  world  admires  one  true  exam 
ple  of  greatness  in  a  people. 


III. 

THE  GROWTH  OF  LAW* 


FEW  persons,  it  is  presumed,  have  failed  to  observe, 
that  there  are  two  great  stages  in  the  matters  of  human 
life  and  experience,  one  of  which  is  always  preparing, 
and  merging  itself  in,  the  other.  It  is  so,  not  simply  in 
the  sense  of  an  apostle,  when  he  says — "first  that  which 
is  natural,  afterward  that  which  is  spiritual;"  but,  with 
out  going  out  of  the  world,  or  over  to  the  resurrection, 
for  the  matter  of  the  contrast,  we  may  say  universally— 
what  is  physical  first,  what  is  moral  afterwards. 

The  child  begins  his  career  as  a  creature  of  muscles 
and  integuments,  a  physical  being  endued  with  sensa 
tion.  Whole  years  are  expended  in  making  acquaint 
ance  with  the  body  he  lives  in.  By  acting  in  and 
through  this  organ,  he  discovers  himself,  begins  to  be  a 
thinking  and  reflective  creature,  and  finally  flowers  into 
some  kind  of  character. 

The  world  itself  is  first  a  lump  of  dull  earth,  a  mere 
physical  thing  seen  by  the  five  senses.  The  animals 
that  graze  on  it,  see  it  as  we  do.  But  thought,  a  little 

*  Delivered  as  an  Oration  before  the  Society  of  Alumni,  in  Yule  Col 
lege,  Aug.  16,  A.  D.  1843. 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  79 

farther  on,  begins  to  work  upon  it  and  bring  out  its 
laws.  The  heights  are  ascended,  the  depths  explored, 
and  every  star  and  atom  is  found  to  be  so  congener  to 
thought,  that  mind  can  think  out  and  assign  its  laws. 
The  whole  field  of  being  thus  brought  into  science, 
takes  an  attribute  of  intelligence  and  reflects  a  Univer 
sal  Mind.  Every  object  of  knowledge  and  experience, 
too,  discovers  moral  ends  and  uses,  and  assumes  a  visi 
ble  relation  to  our  spiritual  training.  Now  the  old 
physical  orb  on  which  our  five  senses  grazed  is  gone, 
we  can  not  find  it.  All  objects  are  become  mental  ob 
jects,  and  matter  itself  is  moral. 

If  we  speak  of  language,  this,  as  every  scholar  knows, 
is  physical  in  every  term.  Words,  all  words,  are  only 
names  of  external  things  and  objects.  Next,  the  words, 
which  are  mere  physical  terms — names,  that  is,  of  ob 
jects,  colors,  shapes,  acts,  motions — pass  into  use  as 
figures  of  thought  and  vehicles  of  intelligence.  The 
physical  world  takes  a  second  and  higher  existence, 
thus,  in  the  empire  of  thought.  Its  objects  beam  out, 
transfigured  with  glory,  and  the  body  of  matter  be 
comes  the  body  of  letters.  The  story  of  Orpheus  is 
now  no  more  a  fiction ;  for  not  only  do  the  woods  and 
rocks  dance  after  this  one  singer,  but  all  physical  ob 
jects,  in  heaven  and  earth,  having  now  found  an  intel 
lectual  as  well  as  a  material  power,  follow  after  the  cre 
ative  agency  of  thinking  souls,  and  pour  themselves 
along,  in  trains  of  glory,  on  the  pages  of  literature. 

Even  religion  is  physical  in  its  first  demonstrations — 
a  thing  of  outward  doing ;  a  lamb,  burned  on  an  altar 


80  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

of  turf,  and  rolling  up  its  smoke  into  heaven;  a 
gorgeous  priesthood;  a  temple,  covered  with  a  king 
dom's  gold,  and  shining  afar  in  barbaric  splendor. 
Well  is  it  if  the  sun  and  the  stars  of  heaven  do  not  look 
down  upon  realms  of  prostrate  worshipers.  Nay,  it  is 
well  if  the  hands  do  not  fashion  their  own  gods,  and 
bake  them  into  consistency  in  fires  of  their  own  kind 
ling.  But,  in  the  later  ages,  God  is  a  spirit ;  religion 
takes  a  character  of  intellectual  simplicity  and  enthrones 
itself  in  the  summits  of  the  reason.  It  is  wholly  spirit 
ual,  a  power  in  the  soul,  reaching  out  into  worlds  be 
yond  sense,  and  fixing  its  home  and  rest  where  only 
hope  can  soar. 

Civil  government,  also,  in  its  first  stages,  classes 
rather  with  the  dynamic  than  with  the  moral  forces. 
It  is  the  law  of  the  strongest ;  a  mere  physical  absolut 
ism,  without  any  consideration  of  right,  whether  as  due 
to  enemies  or  subjects.  At  length,  after  it  has  worn  it 
self  deep  into  the  neck  of  nations,  by  long  ages  of  arbi 
trary  rule,  the  masses  begin  to  heave  with  surges  of  un 
easiness.  They  discover  the  worth  of  their  being  in 
what  it  suffers.  They  reason  about  rights ;  they  rebel 
and  revolutionize ;  they  set  limits  to  power  and  define 
its  objects;  till,  at  length,  government  loses  its  physical 
character  and  seeks  to  rest  itself  on  moral  foundations, — 
on  the  good  it  does,  the  love  it  wins,  the  patriotic  fire 
it  kindles;  in  a  word,  on  the  moral  sentiment  of  the 
governed^ 

Now  it  is  to  be  with  virtue  itself  and  its  law,  pre- 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  81 

cisely  as  it  is  in  these  other  matters — this  I  undertake  to 
show.  The  same  kind  of  transition  from  a  coarse,  raw, 
physical  state  is  here  preparing,  and  is  to  be  finally 
passed.  All  wrongs  partake,  more  or  less,  of  violence. 
All  crude  moralities  are  deformities  gendered  by  poli 
cies,  lies,  and  revenges — by  mixtures  of  passion,  force, 
and  fear.  Whatever  we  call  moral  disorder  in  the 
world  comes  of  the  fact,  that  men  are  willful,  forceful, 
withdrawing  towards  what  is  physical,  and  away  from 
the  pure  affinities  of  principle.  But  there  is  and  is  to 
be  a  growth  of  law,  and  a  growth  into  law,  and  the 
moral  imperative  is  thus  to  obtain  a  more  and  more 
nearly  spontaneous  rule  in  the  world ;  till  finally  the 
transition  above  named  will  be  made,  and  a  better  cir 
cle  of  history  entered — the  same,  if  you  will  indulge 
the  fancy,  which  gleamed  so  brightly,  as  a  future 
golden  age,  on  the  vision  of  the  ancient  sages  and  seers 
of  classic  days — the  same,  with  no  indulgence  of  fancy, 
which  wiser  sages  and  prophets  more  inspired  have 
boldly  promised. 

Of  course  it  will  not  be  supposed  that  I  dare  to  an 
ticipate  any  such  consummation,  on  the  ground  of  a 
mere  natural  progress  in  the  race.  I  take  the  world 
with  all  God's  supernatural  working,  that  of  his  Provi 
dence,  that  of  his  Spirit,  all  Christianity,  in  fact,  in 
cluded  in  it.  In  this  largest,  most  comprehensive,  view 
of  the  race,  it  is  that  I  venture  on  so  large  a  promise. 
If,  then,  I  can  help  you  to  anticipate  any  so  splendid  re 
sult  to  the  painful  and  wearisome  history  of  our  race ; 
if  I  can  bring  to  the  toils  of  virtue  in  our  bosoms,  any 


82  THE    GEOWTH    OF    LAW. 

such  confidence  or  hope  of  triumph ;  if  I  can  open  to 
learning  and  genius  these  exhilarating  hopes  and  these 
wide  fields  of  empire;  I  shall  not  speak  in  vain,  or 
want  a  j  notification  before  you. 

At  this  venerable  seat  of  learning  letters  are  subordi 
nate  always  to  virtue  and  religion;  which  makes  it 
only  the  more  fit,  in  addressing  you  as  Alumni,  that  I 
offer  to  engage  you  in  the  question,  when,  or  by  what 
means,  shall  society  and  learning  have  their  common 
aims  fulfilled  in  the  complete  sovereignty  of  truth  and 
right  among  men  ?  As  the  founders  had  the  highest 
veneration  for  the  classics  and  for  intellectual  ornament 
of  every  kind,  and  could  yet  value  their  foundation  as 
the  means  to  a  yet  higher  end — in  which  they  embraced 
whatever  is  good  or  magnificent  in  the  future  history 
of  the  race — so  the  institution  still  values  itself  and  is 
valued  by  its  numerous  body  of  friends,  in  every  part 
of  our  great  country,  as  the  support  of  truth  and  right 
eousness.  We  ourselves  cleave  to  it  as  to  a  good 
mother,  whose  name  and  remembrance  is  made  dearer 
to  us,  by  the  moral  experience  of  life  and  the  wisdom 
of  years.  Possibly,  if  mere  learning  or  literary  splen 
dor  were  its  object,  it  might  have  gained  an  easier  ce 
lebrity,  and,  with  less  of  elegant  learning,  might  have 
had  the  repute  of  more.  But  virtue  and  truth  have  a 
long  run,  and  it  will  be  found,  as  the  years  and  ages 
wear  away,  and  society  ascends  to  its  destiny  of  splen 
dor,  that  this  institution,  modestly  ordained  to  be  the 
servant  of  virtue,  ascends  with  it,  and  gains  to  itself  the 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  83 

highest  honors  of  learning,  by  its  union  to  the  highest 
well-being  and  glory  of  the  race. 

We  stand  here,  then,  on  a  moral  eminence,  where 
learning  unites  her  destinies  to  that  of  virtue,  we  look 
abroad  up  and  down  the  track  of  human  life,  to  see 
whither  it  leads,  and  especially,  to  fortify  our  confi 
dence  of  a  day  when  all  the  great  forces  of  society- — 
policy,  law,  power,  learning,  and  art — shall  bow  to  the 
lordship  of  moral  ideas,  and  the  just  sovereignty  of 
their  rule  in  all  human  affairs. 

What  now,  let  us  ask,  is  necessary  to  this  result — by 
what  means,  if  at  all,  shall  it  be  reached?  This  we 
shall  see  by  a  glance  at  the  nature  of  the  moral  depart 
ment,  or  law  side  of  our  human  life. 

In  what  is  called  virtue,  there  are  two  distinct 
spheres  and  kinds  of  obligation ;  that  of  fundamental 
principle,  and  that  of  outward,  executory  practice,  or 
expression.  In  the  allegiance  of  the  soul  to  the  funda 
mental  principle,  all  virtue  consists;  in  the  due  con 
formity  of  outward  action  to  the  code  which  regulates 
that  sphere,  the  virtue  is  fitly  exercised  and  worthily 
expressed. 

Inquiring  next  for  the  fundamental  principle,  it  is 
right;  a  simple,  original,  necessary  idea,  a  kind  of  cate 
gory  indeed  of  the  soul's  own  nature ;  for,  as  we  could 
not  ask  when?  if  we  had  no  idea  of  time,  or  how 
many  ?  if  we  had  no  idea  of  number,  or  what  proposi 
tions  are  true  ?  if  we  had  no  idea  of  truth,  so  we  could 
never  ask  what  things  are  right?  if  we  had  not  the 


84  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

idea  of  right,  self-announced  and  asserting  its  rightful 
authority  in  our  consciousness.  "We  think  in  these  nat 
ural  categories,  and  without  them  could  not  even  begin 
to  think  as  intelligences  at  all — should  not,  in  fact,  he 
men. 

To  define  this  idea  of  right  is  impossible  because  it  is 
simple ;  the  most  we  can  do  is  to  note  that  a  straight 
line  is  the  natural  symbol  of  it;  therefore  we  call 
it  right,  or  rec-tus ;  that  is,  straight.  Or  we  may  note 
that  scripture,  so  very  close  to  nature — "  let  thine  eyes 
look  right  on,  and  thine  eyelids  look  straight  before 
thee." 

By  this  ideal  law  we  should  be  bound,  even  if  we 
existed  apart  from  all  relations,  just  as  God  was  bound 
before  all  his  acts  of  creation ;  therefore  we  call  it  the 
law  absolute.  But  we  have  another  law  exactly  twin 
to  this  in  terms  of  relational  existence ;  it  is  love.  This 
latter  belongs  more  especially, to  religion,  which  is  itself 
relational,  as  respects  God,  since  God  undertakes — that 
is  the  whole  aim  of  his  government — to  be  the  defender 
of  right.  But  the  two  are  so  far  measures  each  of  the 
other,  that  whoever  is  fixed  and  centralized  in  one,  will 
be  in  the  other,  as  God  Himself  is. 

Here,  now,  as  we  have  intimated,  is  the  substance  of 
virtue  ;  it  is  righteousness,  it  is  love/  Being  so  entered 
into  the  principle  of  all  virtue,  the  next  question  will 
be,  passing  into  the  second  sphere  of  virtue,  by  what 
acts,  doings,  works,  dispositions,  shall  we  fitly  represent, 
execute,  outwardly  express,  the  principle  into  which  we 
have  come  ?  Having  the  substance,  what  shall  be  the 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  85 

manners  and  modes  by  which  we  are  to  show  it  and 
give  it  fit  exercise?  It  is  here,  as  when  we  pass  out  of 
the  pure  mathematics  into  computations  of  forms,  dis 
tances,  orbits,  and  forces.  The  real  substance  of  virtue 
is  constituted  by  no  outward  doings  or  practices. 
These  have  no  moral  character  in  themselves.  Merit 
and  demerit  are  never  measured  by  them,  but  only  by  the 
fundamental  law.  In  these  true  virtue  is  only  concerned 
to  act  herself  out.  And  there  is  no  small  difficulty  in 
solving  the  question,  how  ?  For  this  world  of  outward 
action  is  made  up  of  infinite  particulars,  separable  by 
no  absolute  distinctions,  and  flowing  continually  to 
wards  or  into  each  other.  Thus  we  shall  ask  what  the 
scripture,  as  a  revelation  of  Grod,  enjoins,  either  directly 
or  by  analogy  ?  then  what  is  the  practice  sanctioned  by 
custom  or  the  common  law  of  society  ?  what  is  useful, 
equal,  true,  beautiful  ? — in  a  word,  what  forms  of  action 
are  aesthetically  fit  to  express  the  right,  or  a  right 
spirit  ?  These  rules  of  conduct  thus  elaborated  are,  of 
necessity,  only  proximate.  They  may  be  crude  and 
discordant ;  they  may  be  such  as  even  to  limit,  and,  as 
a  more  cultivated  age  might  judge,  to  corrupt  the 
strength  of  virtue.  Of  course,  there  is  room  for  indefi 
nite  amplification  and  refinement  in  this  outward  code, 
if  by  any  means  it  may  be  accomplished. 

We  have  a  way  of  speaking  which  attributes  the  ap 
proval  or  disapproval  of  outward  acts  to  the  conscience. 
But  according  to  the  scheme  of  ethics  here  adopted,  this 
is  true  only  in  a  popular  sense.  The  conscience  is  our 
sense  of  the  authority  of  right,  or  our  consciousness  of 

8 


86  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

receiving  or  rejecting  this  great  internal  law.  All 
questions  of  outward  duty  are  questions  of  custom,  rev 
elation,  judgment,  taste — they  belong  to  the  sphere  of 
outward  criticism,  in  which  we  are  impelled  by  the  in 
ternal  law,  and  seek  to  realize  it.  The  conscience  is  no 
out-door  faculty,  as  the  popular  language  supposes. 
That  we  come  into  being  with  a  conscience  in  which  all 
possible  acts  in  all  possible  circumstances,  are  discrim 
inated  with  infallible  certainty  beforehand  and  apart 
from  the  aid  of  experience  and  judgment,  is  incredible. 
Quite  as  hard  for  belief  is  it  that,  if  our  conscience  were 
required,  by  itself,  to  settle  all  the  questions  of  duty  as 
they  occur,  (which  perhaps  is  the  popular  notion,)  it 
would  not  rise  up,  like  Mercury  among  the  gods  as  Lu- 
cian  fancies,  and  protest  against  the  infinite  business  of 
all  sorts  it  has  thrown  upon  it. 

Having  now  in  view  this  two-fold  nature  of  law,  we 
perceive  that  there  are  two  ways  in  which  it  may  possi 
bly  advance  its  power,  and  only  two.  If  the  tone  of 
the  conscience,  or  of  its  ideal  law  can  be  invigorated ; 
if  also  the  aesthetic  power,  that  which  discriminates  in 
outward  forms,  can  be  so  disciplined,  or  so  enriched  in 
spiritual  culture,  as  to  distinguish  all  that  is  most  be 
neficent  and  beautiful  in  conduct,  bringing  011  thus  to 
perfection  the  code  of  outward  practice,  the  two  great 
conditions,  of  moral  advance  are  fulfilled.  That  just 
this  two-fold  process  is,  and,  in  all  past  ages,  has  been, 
going  on  I  shall  now  undertake  to  show.  I  will  then 
take  up  three  great  forces  of  history,  always  generically 
distinct  from  each  other,  the  Greek,  the  Roman,  and  the 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  87 

Christian,  showing  how  they  have  conspired  and  are 
always,  in  fact,  operating  together,  to  advance  the 
power  of  moral  ideas,  and  establish  their  complete 
reign  in  the  world. 

Is  there  any  law,  then,  in  human  history,  by  which 
the  authority  of  conscience  is  progressively  invigorated  ? 

Leaving  out  of  view  religious  causes,  of  which  I  will 
speak  in  another  place,  consider  the  remarkable  and 
ever  widening  contrast  that  subsists,  between  the  earli 
est  and  latest  generations  of  history,  in  respect  to  a  re 
flective  habit.  The  childlike  age,  whether  of  the  indi 
vidual  or  of  the  race,  never  reflects  on  itself.  The  lit 
erature  and  conduct  of  the  early  generations  are  marked 
by  a  certain  primitive  simplicity.  The  whole  motion 
of  their  being  travels  outward,  as  the  water  from  under 
the  hills,  and  no  drop  thinks  to  go  back  and  see  whence 
it  came.  They  act  and  sing  right  out,  unconscious  even 
in  their  greatness,  as  the  harp  of  its  music,  or  the  light 
ning  of  its  thunder.  Virtue  in  such  an  age  is  mainly 
impulsive.  It  is  such  a  kind  of  virtue  as  has  not  in 
tellectually  discovered  its  law.  If  now  the  mind  be 
comes  reflective  in  its  habit,  if  it  analyzes  itself  and 
discovers,  among  all  the  powers  and  emotions  of  the 
soul — some  permanent,  and  many  fugitive  as  the  winds 
— one  great,  eternal,  irreversible  law,  towering  above 
every  other  attribute  of  reason,  thought,  and  action,  and 
asserting  its  royal  prerogatives ;  if  it  discovers  remorse 
coiled  up  as  a  wounded  snake  and  hissing  under  the 
throne  of  the  mind ;  if,  too,  it  discovers  the  soul  itself \ 


88  THE    GKOWTH    OF    LAW. 

as  a  spiritual  nature,  strong  with  inherent  immortality, 
and  building  with  a  perilous  and  terrible  industry  here, 
the  structure  of  its  own  future  eternity ;  it  can  not  be 
that  the  moral  tone  of  the  conscience  will  not  be  power 
fully  invigorated.  And  the  transition  I  here  describe, 
from  an  unreflective  to  a  reflective  habit,  is  one  that  is 
evermore  advancing,  and  will  be  to  the  end  of  the 
world. 

Next,  as  it  were,  to  give  greater  verity  to  ideas  and 
laws  of  mental  necessity  and  so  to  the  law  of  the  con 
science  developed  by  reflection,  geometry  and  the  exact 
sciences  will  be  discovered.  The  Pythagorean  disci 
pline  began,  we  are  told,  with  a  period  of  silence ;  and 
as  silence,  according  to  Lord  Bacon,  is  the  fermentation 
of  the  thoughts,  the  disciples  were  thus  started  into  a 
habit  of  reflection.  Next  they  were  exercised  in  geom 
etry,  to  make  them  aware  of  the  reality,  rigidity,  and 
invincibility  of  ideal  truth — that  kind  of  truth  which  is 
developed  by  reflection.  Then  they  passed  into  the 
law  of  virtue,  and  through  this  up  to  God.  The  school 
of  Crotona  was,  thus,  a  miniature  of  the  great  world  it 
self.  The  mathematics  are  mere  evolutions  of  necessary 
ideas;  and  the  moral  value  of  a  strong  mathematical 
discipline  has,  in  this  view,  never  been  adequately  esti 
mated.  By  no  other  means  could  the  mind  be  so 
effectively  apprised  of  the  distinct  existence,  the  firm 
ness,  and  the  stern  necessity  of  principles.  Mere  ele 
gant  literature  would  leave  it  in  a  mire  of  outward  con 
ventionalisms,  a  mere  aesthetic  worker  among  the  flux 
ing  matter  of  forms,  incapable  of  a  strong  philosophic 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  89 

reflection,  and  quite  as  much  of  those  sallies  into 
the  ideal  world  which  nerve  the-  highest  ranges  of 
poetry.  If,  besides,  the  exact  sciences  are  found  to 
reign,  as  they  do,  over  the  great  realm  of  nature  and 
physical  science,  and  the  popular  mind  sees  them  sym 
bolized  to  view,  in  all  visible  existence,  then  will  a  new 
and  more  forcible  impression  of  what  law  and  principle 
are,  become  universal.  Looking  up  to  the  heavens  and 
beholding  all  the  innumerable  orbs  and  powers  of  the 
universe  obedient  to  ideal  laws,  and  revolving  in  forms 
of  the  mind ;  seeing  the  earth  crystallize  into  shapes  of 
ideal  exactness  and  necessity,  and  the  very  atoms  of  the 
globe  yoke  themselves  under  the  mental  laws  of  arith 
metic  ;  seeing,  in  a  word,  the  whole  compact  of  creation 
bedded  in  ideal  truth,  and  yielding  to  the  iron  laws  of 
necessity,  it  becomes  impossible  not  to  feel  some  new 
impression  of  the  rigidity  of  moral  principle,  as  a  law 
of  the  mind,  its  distinct  existence,  its  immutable  obliga 
tion. 

Next  you  will  observe,  as  if  to  carry  on  these  impres 
sions  and  make  them  practical,  that  as  society  advances, 
public  law  becomes  a  rigid  science,  and  the  rights  of  so 
ciety  are  subjected  to  the  stern  arbitrament  of  justice. 
Public  law  is  moral.  It  is  the  public  reason,  revolving 
about  the"  one  great  principle  of  right,  and  constructing 
a  science  of  moral  justice.  Executive  power,  with  all 
its  splendid  prerogatives,  is  seen  withdrawing  to  make 
room  for  a  higher  law ;  even  right.  t  Tribunals  of  jus 
tice  are  erected  and  made  independent.  They  are  to 
sit  clothed  with  the  sacred  majesty  of  right.  Their  ad- 

8* 


90  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

j  udications  are  to  be  stern  decrees  of  Nemesis,  declara 
tions  of  exact,  scientific  justice  between  the  parties. 
This  at  least  is  the  theory  of  public  litigation ;  and'if  it 
should  happen  that  actual  justice  is  dispensed  as  seldom 
as  the  most  caustic  satirists  of  the  law  pretend,  still  it  is 
a  thing  of  inestimable  consequence  that  justice  should 
be  thus  impersonated  among  men.  It  is  a  solemn  con 
cession  to  the  supremacy  of  right,  such  as  helps  to  im 
press  a  cultivated  people  with  a  new  sense  of  the  im 
partial  authority  of  reason  and  principle. 

If  now  a  condition  of  civil  liberty  be  achieved  (and 
this,  we  know,  belongs  to  the  advanced  stages  of  his 
tory)  the  tone  of  moral  obligation  will  be  strengthened 
in  a  yet  higher  degree.  Liberty  is  literally  freedom 
from  constraint,  according  to  the  manner  of  intoxica 
tion  ;  and  it  must  be  confessed  that  in  those  great  up- 
heavings  and  revolutions,  by  which  the  shackles  of  un 
just  dominion  have  been  burst  asunder,  the  constraints 
of  order  and  the  barriers  of  law  have  too  often  been  ut 
terly  swept  away.  The  Liberty  worshiped  is  true  son 
of  Liber,  rightly  named,  as  some  of  the  witty  ancients 
may  have  thought,  from  the  stout  old  god  of  the  vine. 
He  goes  forth,  over  hill  and  dale,  drawn  by  his  father's 
lions,  brandishing  the  wrathful  thyrsus,  boasting  his 
new  inventions,  and  filling  the  people's  heads  with  the 
strong  wine  of  democracy,  till  sense  and  reason  are 
crazed  by  its  fumes.  But  the  sober  hour  comes  after, 
and  then  it  will  be  found  that  the  individual  has 
emerged  from  under  the  masses  in  which  he  lay  buried 
— a  person,  a  distinct  man,  a  subject  of  law,  an  eternal 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  91 

subject  of  God.  Discharged  from  the  constraints  of 
force,  he  is  free  to  meet  the  responsibilities  of  virtue, 
and  he  stands  out  sole  and  uncovered  before  the  smok 
ing  mount  of  the  conscience,  to  receive  its  law.  The 
very  doctrine  of  liberty,  too,  when  it  finds  a  doctrine, 
will  be  that  force  put  upon  the  conscience  or  the  reason, 
is  sacrilege.  Conscience,  it  will  declare,  is  no  other 
than  the  sacred  throne  of  God,  which  no  power  or  po 
tentate  may  dare  to  touch.  Mounting  thus  above  all 
human  prerogative  to  set  its  own  stern  limits  and  hold 
back  the  strong  hand  of  power,  as  in  these  latter  ages 
it  is  beginning  to  do,  how  high  is  the  reach  of  con 
science  seen  to  be,  how  mighty  its  grasp,  how  impartial 
its  reign ! 

I  have  thus  alluded,  as  briefly  as  I  could,  to  three  or 
four  stages  or  incidents  in  the  progress  of  history  which 
make  it  clear  that  the  moral  tone  of  the  conscience  must 
be  ever  advancing  in  power  and  clearness. 

Pass  on  now  to  the  outward  code  of  virtue,  that  which 
regulates  her  conduct  and  forms  of  action.  Though 
there  is  no  merit  or  demerit,  nothing  right  or  wrong,  in 
any  outward  conduct  as  such,  still  the  interests  of  virtue 
are  deeply  involved  in  the  perfection  of  the  outward 
code.  The  internal  life  of  virtue  can  neither  propagate 
its  power  nor  diffuse  its  blessings,  except  through  the 
outward  state.  Furthermore,  as  expression  always  in 
vigorates  what  is  expressed,  and  as  the  outward  reacts 
on  the  inward  by  a  sovereign  influence,  it  becomes  a 
matter  of  the  highest  consequence,  as  regards  the  inter- 


92  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

nal  health  of  virtue,  that  she  should  have  her  outward 
code  complete  and,  without  exception,  beautiful. 

Accordingly  there  is  a  work  of  progressive  legislation 
continually  going  forward,  by  which  the  moral  code  is 
perfecting  itself.  This  code,  as  outward,  is  no  fixed 
immutable  thing,  as  many  suppose.  Custom  is  its  in 
terpreter,  and  it  grows  up  in  the  same  way  as  the  com 
mon  or  civil  law,  or  the  law  merchant,  by  a  constant 
process  of  additions  and  refinements.  Life  itself  is  an 
open  court  of  legislation,  where  reasonings,  opinions, 
wants,  injuries,  are  ever  drawing  men  into  new  senses 
of  duty  and  extending  the  laws  of  society,  to  suit  the 
demands  of  an  advanced  state  of  being.  All  art  and 
beauty,  every  thing  that  unfolds  the  power  of  outward 
criticism,  enters  into  this  progress.  So  does  Christian 
love,  which  is  ever  seeking,  as  the  great  apostle  per 
ceives,  to  execute  its  spirit,  in  the  most  perfect  forms  of 
conduct.  As  when  he  prays — That  your  love  may 
abound  yet  more  and  more  in  all  knowledge  and  judg 
ment  [au<f&-r)<f^  esthetic  discernment]  that  ye  may  ap 
prove  things  that  are  excellent. 

Moral  legislation  is,  in  fact,  one  of  the  highest  inci 
dents  of  our  existence.  Not  that  man  here  legislates, 
but  God  through  man ;  for  it  is  not  by  any  will  of  man, 
that  reason,  experience  and  custom  are  ever  at  work  to 
make  new  laws  and  refine  upon  the  old ;  these  are  to 
God  as  an  ever  smoking  Sinai  under  his  feet,  and,  if 
there  be  much  of  dissonance  and  seeming  confusion  in 
the  cloudy  mount  of  custom,  we  may  yet  distinguish 
the  sound  of  the  trumpet,  and  the  tables  of  stone,  we 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW  93 

shall  see  in  due  time,  distinctly  written,  as  by  no  human 
finger.  Laws  will  emerge  from  the  experience  of  life, 
and  get  power  to  command  us. 

Let  us  not  seem,  in  this  view,  to  strike  at  the  immuta 
bility  of  virtue.  We  have  no  such  thought.  The  law 
of  virtue  is  immutable  and  eternal,  above  all  expedi 
ency  or  self-interest;  all  change,  circumstance,  power, 
and  plan;  necessary  as  God,  necessary  even  to  Grod. 
But  the  substance  of  virtue  lies,  as  we  have  said,  in  no 
outward  forms  of  conduct,  and  it  is  only  these  that  are 
subject  to  modification.  Thus  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
time,  and  time  is  ever  the  same  thing  in  its  nature. 
But  where  is  time  ?  Not  in  the  sun,  not  in  the  dial, 
not  in  the  clock  or  watch ;  or,  if  there,  it  is  as  much 
everywhere  else.  Time  is  ideal,  a  thing  of  the  mind. 
But,  though  time  is  nowhere  in  the  outward  world,  it 
has  its  signs  and  measures  there,  and  what  matter  is  it  if 
they  are  changed  ?  that  does  not  affect  the  immutable 
nature  of  time.  Measured  by  the  sun,  the  moon,  the 
hour-glass,  the  clock  or  watch,  the  flight  of  birds  or  the 
opening  of  flowers,  time  is  still  the  same.  So  it  is  with 
virtue ;  it  is  the  same  unchanging,  eternal  principle, 
though  its  outward  code  of  manifestation  has  variety 
and  progress. 

Neither  let  us  seem  to  impugn  the  authority  of  the 
revelation.  The  statutes  of  revealed  law  may  be  di 
vided  into  two  classes.  First  the  class  comprising  such 
as  are  given  for  their  inherent  beneficence ;  the  points 
of  the  decalogue,  for  example,  and  the  golden  rule  of 
the  New  Testament;  which,  being  the  want  of  all  ages, 


94  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

are  to  be  drawn  out  farther  and  farther  in  their  ramifi 
cations  and  refinements,  and  be  the  staple,  as  it  were, 
of  a  complete  moral  co'de.  Secondly  the  class  compris 
ing  permissive  statutes,  like  the  license  given  by  Moses 
to  buy  slaves  of  the  nations  round  about;  which,  as 
they  impose  no  obligation,  have  no  permanent  signifi 
cance,  except  in  showing  that  slavery  is  not  inherently 
and  in  all  cases  and  ages  a  necessary  wrong ;  also  ordi 
nances  of  things  useful  at  the  time,  but  liable  to  be  su 
perseded — as  for  example  sacrifices  and  ritual  observ 
ances  ;  also  commands  that  get  their  fitness  and  propri 
ety  from  the  present  condition  or  custom  of  society — 
such  as  the  law  against  taking  interest  for  the  loan  of 
money,  and  that  forbidding  a  woman  to  appear  in  pub 
lic  having  her  head  uncovered;  also  mandates  given 
for  retribution's  sake,  like  the  "statutes  not  good"  of 
which  the  prophet  spake;  also  permissions  and  com 
mands,  not  because  they  are  the  best,  but  because  they 
are  the  best  that  a  crude-minded,  wild,  or  half-barba 
rous  people  can  appreciate  enough  to  accept  as  obliga 
tory,  or  the  best  which  can  be  enjoined  without  provok 
ing  results  of  barbarity  worse  than  the  mischiefs  tempo 
rarily  allowed — of  which  I*  may  give  as  example  the 
silent  permissions  of  polygamy,  and  the  law  permitting 
husbands  to  put  away  their  wives  by  a  divorce  which 
is  their  own  act ;  a  law  which  Christ  himself  declares 
was  given  "  because  of  the  hardness  of  their  hearts ;" 
that  is  to  save  the  hapless  wives  from  being  dispatched 
by  a  more  summary  method. 

I  have  made  this  exact  and  rather  tedious  specifica- 


THE    GKOWTII    OF    LAW.  95 

tion,  just  to  save  the  doctrine  I  wish  to  assert  from  the 
imputation  of  a  trespass  on  the  sacred  authority  of  scrip 
ture.  You  perceive,  as  regards  the  first  class  of  stat 
utes,  that  they  are  going,  by  the  supposition,  directly 
into  the  great  mill  of  human  casuistries,  to  be  refined 
upon,  run  out  into  subtle  applications  more  and  more 
distinct  from  the  crude  applications  of  the  early  times, 
and  so  to  be  roots  of  a  vast  codified  system  of  ethics. 
And  the  work  will  be  going  on  for  ages,  ripening 
slowly  and  by  imperceptible  degrees.  Thus,  for  exam 
ple,  it  is  a  very  simple  thing  to  say — "  Thou  shalt  not 
steal," — but  the  growth  of  society,  property,  and  mer 
cantile  law,  will  raise  thousands  of  questions  where  the 
sharpest  perception  will  distinguish,  with  much  diffi 
culty,  precisely  what  is  and  is  not  included  under  the 
principle  of  the  law. 

As  regards  the  whole  second  class,  manifold  and  va 
rious  as  it  is,  you  will  see  that  modifications,  discontin 
uances,  and  even  contrary  rules  of  practice,  are,  by  the 
supposition,  possible,  and  likely  to  appear.  They  are 
such  as  are  casual  in  their  very  nature,  appropriate  only 
to  the  present  time,  and  a  great  part  of  them  such  as 
belong  to  the  crudity  and  the  barbarous  perceptions 
and  manners  of  an  early  stage  of  society.  For  nothing 
is  more  plain,  than  that  a  barbarous  people  could  not 
receive  a  perfectly  beautiful  code  of  conduct.  Is  it  any 
thing  new,  that  if  you  give  a  clown  directions  how  to 
execute  a  beautiful  painting,  he  could  not  even  take  the 
sense  of  the  directions?  or,  if  you  should  give  him  a 
full  code  of  politeness,  that  he  conlcl  not  enter  into  its 


96  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

terms  ?  But  how  vast  in  compass,  and  multifarious  in 
number,  and  complicated  in  form,  are  the  rules  of  a 
perfect  code  of  life,  compared  with  the  strokes  of  a 
painter's  art,  or  the  items  of  a  polite  conduct !  What 
scope  is  there  here  for  criticism !  what  exactness  of  dis 
cipline  does  it  require,  only  to  understand  what  is  wise. 
or  useful,  or  fair,  in  all  cases,  even  when  it  is  revealed ! 
What  sharpness  of  taste,  only  to  discriminate  or  con 
ceive  all  beautiful  actions,  when  expressly  commanded 
— greater,  by  far,  than  any  nation  as  yet  possesses ! 

Neither  let  us  wonder,  if  it  takes  many  ages  to  clear 
the  moral  code  of  all  barbarous  anomalies,  and  bring  it 
to  a  full  maturity.  Experience  must  have  a  long  and 
painful  discipline,  philosophy  must  go  down  into  the 
grounds  of  things,  rights  must  be  settled,  letters  ad 
vanced,  the  beautiful  arts  come  into  form ;  God  must 
wait  on  the  creature,  and  conduct  him  on  through  long 
ages  of  mistake  and  crudity — command,  reason,  try, 
enlighten,  brood,  as  over  chaos,  by  his  quickening 
power — and  then  it  will  be  only  by  slow  degrees  that 
the  moral  taste  of  the  world  will  approximate  to  a  co 
incidence  with  the  perfect  moral  taste  of  God. 

Let  us  now  see  if  facts  will  justify  our  reasonings. 
Far  back,  in  the  remotest  ages  of  definite  history,  we 
find  one  of  the  world's  patriarchs  so  fortunate  or  unfor 
tunate  as  to  be  the  inventor  of  wine,  by  which  he  is 
buried  in  the  excesses  of  intoxication,  we  know  not 
how  many  times,  with  no  apparent  compunction.  Say 
ing  nothing  of  abstinence,  not  even  the  law  of  temper 
ance  had  yet  been  reached.  Another,  who  is  called  the 


THE     GROWTH     OF     LAW.  97 

"father  of  the  faithful,"  has  not  yet  so  refined  upon  the 
moral  statute  against  lying,  as  to  see  that  prevarication 
is  to  be  accounted  a  lie.  Accordingly,  he  more  than 
once,  shows  his  ingenuity  in  a  practice  on  words,  with 
no  apparent  sense  of  wrong.  A  successor,  in  equal 
honor  as  a  religious  man,  deceives  his  blind  father  by  a 
trick  of  disguise,  and  steals  the  blessing  of  his  brother. 
He  takes  advantage  also  of  this  brother's  hunger  to  ex 
tort  his  birthright  from  him — acts  which  in  our  day 
would  cover  him  with  infamy.  These  were  all  holy 
men.  It  was  not  so  much  sin  as  barbarism,  that  mar 
red  their  history.  These  instances  of  unripe  morality 
furnish  no  ground  of  cavil  against  the  Scriptures,  but, 
to  all  reasoning  minds,  they  are  the  strongest  evidences 
of  their  real  antiquity  and  truth.  I  have  not  time  to 
lead  you  through  the  Jewish  history.  The  remarkable 
fact  in  it  is,  that,  with  so  high  notions  of  the  principle, 
the  outward  style  of  virtue  is  yet  so  harsh,  so  visibly 
barbarous.  You  seem  to  be  in  a  raw  physical  age, 
where  force  and  sensualism  and  bigotry  of  descent  dis 
play  their  odious  and  unlovely  presence,  even  in  men 
of  the  highest  worth  and  dignity.  As  you  approach 
the  later  age  of  their  literature  and  history,  you  per 
ceive  a  visible  mitigation  of  its  features.  Christianity 
then  appears.  The  old  outward  regimen  of  beggarly 
elements  is  swept  away,  new  precepts  of  benevolence 
and  forbearance  are  given,  the  Jew  is  lost  in  the  man, 
and  the  man  becomes  a  brother  of  his  race.  How  sub 
lime  the  contrast,  then,  of  Genesis  and  John  ! 

What  we  see,   in  this  glance  at  sacred  history,   is 
9 


98  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

quite  as  conspicuous  in  the  general  review  of  humanity. 
The  moral  code  of  a  savage  people  has  always  some 
thing  to  distinguish  it  as  a  savage  people's  code.  So 
with  that  of  a  civilized.  The  very  changes  and  inven 
tions  of  society  necessitate  an  amplification  and  often  a 
revision  of  the  moral  code.  Every  new  state,  office, 
art,  and  thing  must  have  its  law.  The  old  law  maxim, 
cuilibet  in  sua  arte  credendum  est,  every  trade  must  be 
suffered  to  make  its  law,  is  only  half  the  truth — every 
trade  will  make  its  law.  If  bills  of  exchange  are  in 
vented,  if  money  is  coined,  if  banks  are  established,  and 
offices  of  insurance,  if  great  corporate  investments  are 
introduced  into  the  machinery  of  business,  it  will  not 
be  long  before  a  body  of  moral  opinions  will  be  genera 
ted,  and  take  the  force  of  law  over  these  new  creations. 
Fire-arms  also,  printing,  theatres,  distilled  spirits,  cards, 
dice,  medicine,  all  new  products  and  inventions,  must 
come  under  moral  maxims  and  create  to  themselves  a 
new  moral  jurisprudence.  The  introduction  of  popular 
liberty  makes  the  subject  a  new  man,  lays  upon  him  new 
duties,  which  require  to  be  set  forth  in  new  maxims  of 
morality.  Already  have  I  shown  you,  in  these  brief 
glances,  a  new  world  created  for  the  dominion  of  law. 
And  what  was  said  of  the  human  body,  growing  up  to 
maturity,  is  equally  true  of  the  great  social  body  :— 

"For  nature  crescent  does  not  grow  alone, 
In  thews  and  bulk,  but  as  this  temple  waxes, 
The  inward  service  of  the  mind  and  heart 
Grows  wide  withal." 

I  also  hinted,  that  new  arts  and  inventions  must  often 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  99 

so  change  the  relations  of  old  things  and  practices,  as  to 
require  a  revision  of  their  law.  The  Jew  may  rightly 
take  his  interest  money  now,  for  other  reasons  than  be 
cause  the  Mosaic  polity  is  dissolved.  He  is  not  the  same 
man  that  his  fathers  were.  He  lives  in  a  new  world, 
and  sustains  new  relations.  The  modes  of  business,  too, 
are  all  so  changed  by  the  credit  system,  which  makes  a 
capital  of  character,  that  the  merits  of  receiving  interest 
money  are  no  more  the  same,  although  the  mere  out 
ward  act  is  such  as  to  be  described  in  the  same  words. 
'At  this  very  moment,  we  have  it  on  hand  to  revise  the 
moral  code  in  reference  to  three  very  important  subjects 
— wine,  slavery,  and  war.  The  real  question,  on  these 
subjects,  if  we  understood  ourselves,  is  not,  on  one  side, 
whether  we  can  torture  the  Scripture  so  as  to  make  it 
condemn  all  that  we  desire  to  exclude ;  nor,  on  the 
other,  whether  we  are  bound,  for  all  time,  and  eternity 
to  boot,  to  justify  what  the  Scripture  has  sometime 
suffered.  But  the  question,  philosophically  stated,  is, 
whether  new  cognate  inventions  and  uses,  do  not  make 
old  practices  more  destructive,  old  vices  more  incura 
ble  ;  whether  a  new  age  of  the  world  and  a  capacity  of 
better  things,  have  not  so  changed  the  relations  of  the 
practices  in  issue,  that  they  are  no  longer  the  same,  and 
no  longer  to  be  justified.  Physically  speaking,  it  is  the 
same  act  to  go  into  a  certain  house,  and  tox  go  into  it 
having  a  contagious  disease — not  morally.  Physically 
speaking,  it  is  the  same  act  to  go  into  it  having  a  con 
tagious  disease,  and  to  go  into  it  when  the  inmates  have 
found  a  new  medicine  which  is  proof  against  the  conta- 


100  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

gion — not  morally.  In  this  view,  it  is  nothing  to  say 
that  wine-drinking  is  restrained  in  the  Scripture  by  no 
law  but  temperance ;  for  the  neighborhood  of  distilled 
liquors,  a  modern  invention,  makes  it  no  longer  the 
same  thing,  but  a  thing  so  different  that  abstinence, 
possibly,  is  the  only  adequate  rule  of  beneficent  prac 
tice.  This,  precisely,  is  the  question  we  are  now  litigat 
ing.  In  the  same  way,  since  the  mitigation  of  the  war- 
state  of  nations,  and  the  extended  sense  of  fraternity 
between  them,  have  widened  the  basis  of  moral  ideas, 
human  slavery  is  no  longer  to  be  justified  by  ancient 
examples ;  for  the  advanced  sentiment  of  the  world, 
under  Christianity,  makes  it  capable  of  a  better  and 
juster  practice.  In  this  manner  the  moral  import  of 
actions,  physically  the  same,  is  thus  ever  changing,  and 
no  reform  is  bad,  because  it  requires  a  revision  of  law ; 
for  the  change  of  condition,  wrought  by  time,  may  be 
so  great  as  to  render  the  former  law  inapplicable.  It  is 
conceivable  that  even  a  positive  statute  of  revelation 
may  lose  its  applicability,  by  reason  of  a  radical  change 
in  the  circumstances  it  was  designed  to  cover.  ISTor 
can  it  properly  be  said  that  such  a  statute  is  repealed— 
it  is  only  waiting  for  the  circumstances  in  which  its 
virtue  lay.  A  new  rule  contradictory  to  it  in  words, 
may  yet  be  wholly  consistent  with  it,  and  bring  no  re 
flection  on  its  merits.  Accordingly,  in  what  are  called 
reforms,  the  real  problem  more  frequently  is  to  revise  or 
mitigate  law,  perhaps  to  legislate  anew.  And  there  is  no 
evil  in  the  human  state,  nothing  opposed  to  the  general 
good  and  happiness,  which  can  not  be  lawed  out  of  ex- 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  101 

istence  by  an  adequate  appeal  to  truth  and  reason, 
which  are  God's  highest  law.  Nothing,  I  will  add, 
which  shall  not  thus  be  lawed  out  of  existence. 

Thus  it  is  within  the  memory  of  persons  now  living, 
that  a  clergyman  of  England,  specially  distinguished 
for  his  piety,  forsook  the  slave  trade,  by  compulsion  of 
Providence,  and  not  because  of  any  Christian  scruples 
concerning  it.  Night  and  morning  he  sent  up  his 
prayers  to  God,  blended  with  the  groans  of  his  captives, 
and  had  his  Christian  peace  among  the  lacerated  limbs 
and  the  unpitied  moans  of  as  many  as  his  ship  could 
hold.  Now  a  law  is  matured  against  this  traffic,  and 
the  man  is  a  monster  who  engages  in  it.  And  if  you 
will  see  the  progress  of  the  moral  code,  you  may  take 
your  map  and  trace  the  exact  countries  which  this  new 
law  has  reached,  just  as  you  may  trace,  from  an  emi 
nence,  the  shadows  of  the  clouds,  as  they  sail  over  a 
landscape. 

If  you  will  see  the  work  of  moral  legislation  on  a 
scale  yet  more  magniificent,  you  have  only  to  advert  to 
what  is  called  the  international  code.  I  know  of  noth 
ing  which  better  marks  the  high  moral  tone  of  modern 
history,  than  that  this  sublime  code  of  law  should  have 
come  into  form  and  established  its  authority  over  the  civ 
ilized  world  within  so  short  a  time ;  for  it  is  now  scarce 
ly  more  than  two  hundred  years  since  it  took  its  being. 
In  the  most  polished  and  splendid  age  of  Greece  and 
Grecian  philosophy,  piracy  was  a  lawful  and  even  hon 
orable  occupation.  Man,  upon  the  waters,  and  the 
shark,  in  them,  had  a  common  right  to  feed  on  what 


102  THE    GKOWTH    OF    LAW. 

they  could  subdue.  Nations  were  considered  as  natu 
ral  enemies,  and  for  one  people  to  plunder  another,  by 
force  of  arms,  and  to  lay  their  country  waste,  was  no 
moral  wrong,  any  more  than  for  the  tiger  to  devour 
the  lamb.  In  war,  no  terms  of  humanity  were  binding, 
and  the  passions  of  the  parties  were  mitigated  by  no 
constraints  of  law.  Captives  were  butchered  or  sold 
into  slavery  at  pleasure.  In  time  of  peace,  it  was  not 
without  great  hazard  that  the  citizen  of  one  country 
could  venture  into  another  for  purposes  of  travel  or 
business. 

Go  now  with  me  to  a  little  French  town  near  Paris, 
and  there  you  shall  see  in  his  quiet  retreat,  a  silent, 
thoughtful  man  bending  his  ample  shoulders  and  more 
ample  countenance  over  his  table,  and  recording  with  a 
visible  earnestness  something  that  deeply  concerns  the 
world.  This  man  has  no  office  or  authority  to  make 
him  a  lawgiver,  other  than  what  belongs  to  the  gifts  of 
his  own  person; — a  brilliant  mind,  enriched  by  the  am 
plest  stores  of  learning,  and  nerved  by  the  highest  prin 
ciples  of  moral  justice  and  Christian  piety.  He  is,  in 
fact,  a  fugitive  and  an  exile  from  his  country,  separated 
from  all  power  but  the  simple  power  of  truth  and  rea 
son.  But  he  dares,  you  will  see,  to  write  De  Jure  Belli 
ct  Pads.  This  is  the  man  who  was  smuggled  out  of 
prison  and  out  of  his  country,  by  his  wife,  in  a  box 
that  was  used  for  much  humbler  purposes,  to  give  law 
to  all  the  nations  of  mankind  in  all  future  ages.  On 
the  sea  and  on  the  land,  on  all  seas  and  all  lands,  he 
si 'all  bear  sway.  In  the  silence  of  his  study,  he 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  103 

stretches  forth  the  scepter  of  law  over  all  potentates  and 
peoples,  defines  their  rights,  arranges  their  intercourse, 
gives  them  terms  of  war  and  terms  of  peace,  which 
they  may  not  disregard.  In  the  days  of  battle,  too, 
when  kings  and  kingdoms  are  thundering  in  the  shock 
of  arms,  this  same  Hugo  Grotius  shall  be  there,  in  all 
the  turmoil  of  passion  and  the  smoke  of  ruin,  as  a  pre 
siding  throne  of  law,  commanding  above  the  command 
ers,  and,  when  the  day  is  cast,  prescribing  to  the  victor 
terms  of  mercy  and  justice,  which  not  even  his  hatred 
of  the  foe,  or  the  exultation  of  the  hour,  may  dare  to 
transcend. 

The  system  of  commercial  law,  growing  out  of  the 
extension  of  trade  and  commerce,  in  modern  times,  is 
another  triumph  of  moral  legislation  almost  equally  sub 
lime  with  the  international.  The  science  of  municipal 
law,  too,  has  not  been  less  remarkable  for  its  progress. 
Saying  nothing  of  the  common  law,  or  law  of  England, 
which  is,  in  a  sense,  the  child  of  the  civil  or  Koman 
law,  what  mind  can  estimate  the  moral  value  and  power 
of  this  latter  code,  extended,  as  its  sway  now  is,  over 
nine-tenths  of  the  civilized  world! 

Now  all  these  systems  of  law,  international,  commer 
cial  and  civil,  are  founded  in  the  natural  reasons  of  the 
moral  code,  and  are,  in  fact,  results  of  moral  legislation. 
Considered,  too,  as  accumulations  of  moral  judgment, 
elaborated  in  the  lapse  of  ages,  they  constitute  a  body 
of  science,  when  taken  together,  compared  with  which 
every  other  work  of  man  is  insignificant.  No  other 
has  cost  such  infinite  labor  and  patience,  none  has  em- 


104  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

bodied  such  a  stupendous  array  of  talent,  none  has 
brought  into  contribution  so  much  of  impartial  reason 
or  constructed  such  libraries  of  scientific  learning. 

Under  these  extensions  of  law,  the  world  has  become 
another  world.  Anarchy  and  absolute  will  are  put 
aside  to  suffer  the  dominion  of  justice.  The  nations 
are  become,  to  a  great  extent,  one  empire.  The  citizen 
of  one  country  may  travel  and  trade  securely  in  almost 
every  other.  Wars  are  mitigated  in  ferocity,  and  so 
far  is  the  moral  sentiment  of  the  world  advanced  in  this 
direction,  that  military  preparations  begin  to  look  for 
mal  and  wear  the  semblance  of  an  antiquated  usage. 
We  may  almost  dare  to  say  as  Pandulph  to  Lewis,  and 
with  a  much  higher  sense : — 

"  Therefore,  thy  threatening  colors  now  wind  up 
And  tame  the  savage  spirit  of  wild  war, 
That,  like  a  lion  fostered  up  at  hand, 
It  may  lie  gently,  at  the  foot  of  peace, 
And  be  no  further  harmful  than  in  show." 

Who  shall  think  it  incredible  that  this  same  progress 
of  moral  legislation,  which  has  gone  thus  far  in  the  in 
ternational  code,  may  ultimately  be  so  far  extended 
as  to  systematize  and  establish  rules  of  arbitrament,  by 
which  all  national  disputes  shall  be  definitely  settled, 
without  an  appeal  to  arms !  And  so  it  shall  result  that, 
as  the  moral  code  is  one,  all  law  shall  come  into  unity, 
and  a  kind  of  virtual  oneness  embrace  all  nations.  We 
shall  flow  together  in  the  annihilation  of  distances  and 
become  brothers  in  the  terms  of  j  ustice.  And  so  shall 
that  sublime  declaration  of  Cicero,  in  his  Republic, 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  .      105 

where  lie  sets  forth  the  theoretic  unity  of  law,  find  a  re 
public  of  nations,  where  it  shall  have  a  more  than  theo 
retic  verity  : — "  Nee  erit  alia  lex  Komse,  alia  Athenis, 
alia  nunc,  alia  posthac,  sed  et  omnes  gentes,  et  omni 
tempore,  et  sempiterna,  et  immortalis  continebit,  unus- 
que  erit  communis  quasi  magister  et  imperator  omnium 
Deus.  Ille  legis  hujus  inventor,  disceptator,  lator  I" 

I  have  thus  endeavored  to  show  that,  as  virtue  is 
two-fold,  so  there  is  a  two-fold  law  of  progress  by  which 
it  is  advanced  in  human  society — one  by  which  the  in 
ward  principle  invigorates  its  tone,  another  by  which 
its  outward  code  is  extended  and  made  to  accord  more 
nicely  with  the  highest  beauty  and  the  most  perfect 
health  of  virtue.  Both  lines  of  progress  have  been  ac 
tive  up  to  this  time,  with  results  as  definitely  marked 
as  the  progress  of  history  itself.  What  now  is  to  come? 
By  what  future  events  and  changes  shall  the  work  go 
on  to  its  completion  ? 

That  must  be  unknown  to  us,  though  the  present 
momentum  of  society  is  enough,  by  itself,  to  assure  us 
in  what  line  the  future  motion  must  proceed.  There 
are,  at  the  same  time,  three  great  forces  in  this  motion, 
which  we  know  are  incapable  of  exhaustion.  These 
must  always  work  on  together,  as  they  have  done  up 
to  this  time,  to  assist  the  triumph  of  the  moral  element. 
Other  forces  have  entered  into  history,  such  as  the 
Gothic  irruptions,  the  crusades,  the  feudal  system,  the 
free  cities  and  their  commerce,  which,  being  more 
nearly  physical,  lose  their  distinct  existence  as  soon  as 


106  THE    GEOWTH    OF     LAW.. 

shey  are  incorporate,  and  are  manifested  only  by  their 
results.  Not  so  with  the  three  of  which  I  am  to  speak 
— they  belong  to  all  future  time,  and  will  never  cease 
their  distinct  activity.  These  three  are  the  Greek,  the 
Roman  and  the  Christian  training.  The  Greek,  as  be- 
Songing  to  the  outward  department  of  virtue  and  assist 
ing  it  by  the  high  aesthetic  discipline  of  its  literature. 
The  Roman,  as  asserting  the  ideal  law  of  virtue  and 
giving  it  a  corporate  embodiment.  The  Christian,  as 
descending  from  heaven  to  pour  itself  into  both, 
quicken  their  activity  and  bring  them  into  earnest  con- 
'nection  with  a  government  above. 

The  first  thing  to  be  observed  in  the  Greek  character 
and  literature,  is  its  want  of  a  moral  tone.  A  mere  in 
cidental  remark  of  Schlegel  touches  what  might  rather 
be  made  the  staple  of  criticism,  in  the  works  of  this 
wonderful  people.  "Even  in  those  cases,"  he  says, 
"  where  the  most  open  expression  of  deep  feeling,  moral 
ity,  or  conscience,  might  have  been  expected,  the  Greek 
authors  are  apt  to  view  the  subject  of  which  they  treat, 
as  a  mere  appearance  of  the  life,  with  a  certain  perfect, 
undisturbed,  and  elaborate  equability."  How  could  it 
be  otherwise,  where  an  Aristotle,  endowed  with  the 
most  gigantic  and  powerful  intellect  ever  given  to  man, 
could  only  define  virtue  itself  as  the  middle  point  be 
tween  two  extremes,  and  every  moral  evil  as  being 
either  too  much  or  too  little  ?  Socrates  and  his  splen 
did  disciple,  it  is  true,  had  a  warmer  and  more  adequate 
idea  of  virtue ;  though  it  will  escape  the  notice  of  no 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  107 

thoughtful  scholar,  that  they  were  charmed  with  virtue, 
rather  as  the  Fair  than  as  the  Eight.  This  is  specially 
true  of  Plato.  He  draws  her  forth  out  of  his  own  intel 
lectual  beauty,  as  Pygmalion  his  ivory  statue,  and,  as 
this  was  quickened  into  life  by  the  word  of  Yenus,  so 
his  notion  of  virtue  takes  its  life  from  the  charms  in 
which  it  is  invested.  Evil  and  vice,  too,  connect,  in 
his  mind,  rather  with  deformity  and  mortification  than 
with  remorse. 

On  the  whole,  there  is  almost  no  civilized  people 
whose  morality  is  more  earthly  and  cold  than  that  of 
the  Greeks.  At  the  same  time,  their  sense  of  beauty  in 
forms,  their  faculty  of  outward  criticism,  is  perfect. 
Their  temples  and  statutes  are  forms  of  perfect  art. 
Their  poets  and  philosophers  chisel  their  thoughts  into 
groups  of  marble.  Their  religion  or  mythology  is 
scarcely  more  than  a  gallery  of  artistic  shapes,  exquis 
itely  sensual.  They  alone,  of  all  people,  in  fact,  have 
a  religion  without  a  moral ;  gods  for  the  zest  of  com 
edy;  gay  divinities  that  go  hunting,  frolicking  and 
thundering  over  sea  and  land.  Genius  only  worships. 
The  chisel  is  the  true  incense,  to  hold  a  place  in  epic 
machinery,  the  true  circle  of  Providence.  Everything 
done  or  written  is  subtle,  etherial,  beautiful,  and  cold ; 
even  the  fire  is  cold — a  combustion  of  icicles.  There 
can  be  no  true  heat  where  there  is  no  moral  life.  They 
love  their  country,  but  they  do  not  love  it  well  enough 
to  suffer  justice  to  be  done  in  it,  or  to  endure  the  pres 
ence  of  virtue.  Their  bravery  is  cunning,  their  patriot 
ism  an  elegant  selfishness.  In  their  ostracism,  they 


108  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

make  public  envy  a  public  right,  and  faction  constitu 
tional.  We  look  up  and  down  their  history,  survey 
their  temples  without  a  religion,  their  streets  lined 
with  chiseled  divinities,  set  up  for  ornamental  effect,  we 
listen  to  their  orators,  we  open  the  shining  rolls  of 
their  literature,  and  exclaim,  beautiful  lust!  splendid 
sensuality !  elegant  faction !  gods  for  the  sake  of  orna 
ment  !  a  nation  perfect  in  outward  criticism,  but  blind, 
as  yet,  to  the  real  nature  and  power  of  the  moral  ideas. 
And  yet  this  people  have  done  a  work,  in  their  way, 
which  is  even  essential  to  the  triumph  of  virtue.  Their 
sense  of  beauty,  their  nice  discriminations  of  art  and 
poetic  genius,  are  contributions  made  to  the  outward 
life  and  law  of  virtue.  A  barbarous  people,  like  the 
wild  African  or  Indian,  you  will  observe,  have  no  sense 
of  form,  and  their  moral  code  will,  for  that  reason,  be  a 
crude  and  shapeless  barbarism.  To  mature  the  code  of 
action,  therefore,  and  finish  its  perfect  adaptation  to  the 
expression  of  virtue  and  the  ornament  of  life,  requires 
a  power  of  form  or  of  outward  criticism,  in  full  devel 
opment.  Considered  in  this  view,  it  is  impossible  to 
overrate  the  value  of  the  Greek  art,  A  whole  depart 
ment  of  human  capacity,  the  talent  of  forms  or  of  out 
ward  criticism  and  expression,  must  be  the  disciple  of 
Greece  to  the  end  of  the  world.  This  same  Greek 
beauty,  which  can  never  perish,  will  go  into  the  Eornan 
life,  and  assist  in  that  process  of  legal  criticism  by 
which  the  civil  law  shall  be  matured.  Then  it  will  go 
into  the  wild  Gothic  liberty  that  is  thundering,  as  yet, 
along  the  Baltic  and  through  the  plains  of  Scythia,  to 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  109 

humanize  it,  and  make  the  element  of  liberty  an  ele 
ment  of  order  and  virtue.  It  will  breathe  a  spirit  of 
beauty  into  every  language  and  literature  of  every  civ 
ilized  people ;  and  their  intellectual  and  moral  life  will 
crystallize  into  the  forms  of  beauty  thus  evolved,  lose 
their  opacity,  and  become  transparent  to  the  light  of 
reason  and  law.  The  Christian  faith,  too,  whose  pre 
rogative  it  is  to  make  all  the  works  both  of  man  and  of 
God  subservient  to  its  honor,  will  take  to  itself  all  the 
beauty  of  all  the  Greeks  and  make  it  the  beauty  of 
holiness. 

We  come  now  to  the  Eomans,  a  people  of  as  high 
originality  as  the  Greeks,  though  not  so  regarded  by 
the  critics,  because  their  originality  did  not  run  into  the 
forms  of  literature.  The  ideal  of  the  Greeks  was 
beauty,  that  of  the  Romans  law  and  scientific  justice. 
We  need  not  suffer  the  common  wonder,  therefore,  that 
all  the  ambition  of  the  Roman  scholars,  aided  by  hordes 
of  emigrant  rhetoricians,  could  not  reproduce  the  Gre 
cian  classic  spirit  in  that  people ;  for  whatsoever  power 
of  outward  criticism  was  awakened,  followed  after  the 
Roman  ideal,  going  to  construct  the  moral  rigors  of  the 
Stoic  philosophy  and  fashion  the  sublime  structure  of 
civil  jurisprudence.  And  Greece  was  as  incapable  of 
the  Roman  law,  as  Rome  of  the  Grecian  literature. 
Which  of  the  two  has  made  the  greatest  and  most  orig 
inal  gift  to  the  future  ages,  it  will  ever  be  impossible  to 
judge. 

It  was  a  distinction  of  the  Roman  people,  that  they 
had  a  strong  sense  of  moral  principle.  They  could  feel 

10 


110  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

the  authority  of  what  some  call  an  abstraction,  and 
suffer  its  rigid  sway.  Their  conscience  had  the  tone  of 
a  trumpet  in  their  bosoms.  This  was  owing,  in  part, 
we  may  believe,  to  their  martial  discipline ;  for  it  is  a 
peculiarity  of  this,  that  it  bends  to  nothing  in  the  indi 
vidual,  his  interest,  comfort,  or  safety.  It  is  as  desti 
tute  of  feeling  as  an  abstraction,  and  accommodates  the 
soldier  to  the  absolute  sway  of  rigid  law.  Accustomed 
to  the  stiff  harness  of  discipline,  to  be  moved  by  the 
unbending  laws  of  mechanism  up  to  the  enemy's  face 
and  the  bristling  points  of  defense,  there  to  live  or  die, 
as  it  may  happen,  without  any  right  to  consider  which ; 
a  nation  of  soldiers  learns  how  to  suffer  an  absolute 
rule,  and,  if  the  other  and  more  corrupt  influences  of 
war  do  not  prevent,  is  prepared,  with  greater  facility, 
to  acknowledge  the  stern  ideal  law  of  virtue. 

The  Romans,  too,  had  a  religion,  a  serious  and  pow 
erful  faith,  gods  that  kept  their  integrity  and  held  a  re 
lation  to  the  conscience.  Even  Mars  himself,  their  tu 
telary  deity,  in  so  far  as  he  was  a  Roman  and  not  a 
Greek,  was,  on  the  whole,  a  much  better  Christian  than 
some  who  have  presided  in  Rome,  with  quite  other 
pretensions;  as  will  scarcely  be  thought  extravagant 
by  the  scholar,  who  duly  considers,  with  what  rever 
ence  they  guarded  the  sacred  ancik  let  fall  from  heaven 
to  be  the  pledge  of  their  safety ;  or  compares  the  pro 
cessions  of  the  Salii,  with  others  of  a  more  recent  date 
and  of  a  different  name.  It  was  also  a  beautiful  dis 
tinction  of  the  religious  character  of  this  people,  that 
they  alone,  of  all  heathen  nations,  erected  temples  to 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  Ill 

the  mere  ideals  of  virtue — Faith,  Concord,  Modesty, 
Peace. 

The  Komans,  also,  were  an  agricultural  people,  nam 
ing  their  noble  families  after  the  bean,  the  pea,  the  len- 
tile,  vetches,  and  other  plants;  retaining  the  sobriety, 
frugality,  and  all  the  rigid  virtues  of  a  life  in  the  fields. 
These  are  the  people  to  suffer  a  censorship,  in  which 
every  licentious  and  effeminate  habit  shall  expose  the 
subject  to  a  public  degradation ;  the  only  people,  I  will 
add,  that  has  ever  existed,  capable  of  such  a  discipline. 

Pass  out  with  me,  now,  into  the  Tusculan  country, 
and  I  will  show  you  one  of  these  old  Puritans.  A 
simple  rustic  house  is  before  you,  the  house  of  a  small 
country  farmer.  A  man  with  red  hair,  and  a  pair  of 
grey  eyes  twinkling  under  his  fiery  eyebrows,  a  muscu 
lar,  iron-faced  man  meets  you  at  the  gate.  This  man 
will  boast  his  dinner  as  a  triumph  of  economy — bread 
baked- by  his  wife,  and  turnips  boiled  by  himself.  Of 
pleasure  he  is  ignorant.  He  keeps  a  few  slaves,  whom 
he  turns  away  when  they  become  old ;  for  it  is  his  way 
to  make  a  rigid  abstraction  even  of  the  principle  of 
economy.  In  the  morning  he  rises  early,  and  goes 
forth  into  the  neighboring  towns  to  plead  causes.  He 
returns,  in  the  afternoon,  puts  on  his  frock,  and  goes 
out  to  work  among  the  slaves.  He  is  a  man  of  wit, 
and  is  to  be  called  the  Eoman  Demosthenes.  He  is  to 
be  a  great  commander,  and  a  part  of  his  prowess  will 
be  that  he  spends  nothing  on  himself  and  makes  the 
army  pay  its  way  by  its  victories.  He  will  reap  the 
honors  of  a  triumph,  he  will  be  consul,  he  will  be  cen- 


112  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

sor.  And  when  Cato  is  censor,  woe  to  the  man  who 
has  defrauded  the  treasury !  every  man  than  gets  over 
the  line  of  sober  drink !  every  high  liver !  every  dandy ! 
Then,  to  crown  all,  this  man  shall  say — for  he  loves  to 
carry  out  a  principle — that  "he  had  rather  his  good  ac 
tions  should  go  unrewarded,  than  his  bad  ones  unpun 
ished."  Inexorable,  in  whatever  relates  to  public  jus 
tice,  inflexibly  rigid  in  the  execution  of  his  orders,  he 
will  make  history  confess,  that  the  Eoman  government 
had  never  before  appeared,  either  so  awful  or  so 
amiable. 

Eoman  virtue,  therefore,  became  a  proverb,  to  denote 
that  strength  of  principle,  which  can  bend  to  no  outward 
obstacle  or  seduction.  And  the  pitch  of  public  virtue 
displayed  by  this  people,  especially  in  the  days  of  the 
ancient  republic,  is  one  of  the  greatest  moral  phenomena 
of  history.  Always  warlike  in  their  habit,  inured  to 
scenes  of  devastation  and  blood,  ambitious  for  their  city 
and  ignorant  of  any  right  in  the  world  but  the  imperial 
right  of  Kome,  they  were,  at  the  same  time,  careless  of 
pleasure  and  of  wealth,  stoics  in  fortitude  and  self-denial, 
immovable  in  conjugal  fidelity,  reverent  to  parents,  in 
capable  of  treachery  to  their  country  or  disobedience  to 
the  laws,  exact  and  even  superstitious  in  the  rites  of 
piety.  Unjust  to  every  other  people,  they  were  yet  the 
firm  adherents  of  law  and  justice  among  themselves. 
They  went  to  war  with  religious  preliminaries.  The 
military  oath  was  their  sacrament,  in  which  they  engaged 
for  a  real  presence ;  and  though  it  was  to  be  a  presence 
in  veritable  blood,  it  was  yet  so  religiously  fulfilled  as 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  113 

to  be  a  bond  of  virtue.  They,  at  first,  sent  forth  their 
legions  to  make  war,  more,  it  would  seem,  because  they 
loved  the  discipline,  than  because  they  wanted  the 
plunder.  The  tramp  of  their  victorious  legions  was 
heard  resounding  at  the  gates  of  cities  and  across  the 
borders  of  nations ;  their  leaders  were  returning,  every 
few  months,  with  triumphal  entries  into  the  city,  that  a 
most  just  people  might  enjoy  and  glory  in  the  spectacle 
of  their  own  public  wrongs ;  till  at  last,  debauched  by 
the  plunder  of  their  victories,  they  may  be  said  to  have 
conquered,  on  the  same  day,  both  the  world  and  their 
own  virtue  together.  JSTor  is  even  this  exactly  true; 
for  it  is  remarkable,  that  they  gave  back  to  the  subject 
nations  the  justice  denied  them  in  their  conquest,  and 
set  up  the  tribunals  of  Roman  law  on  the  fields  of  Ro 
man  lawlessness !  Equally  .remarkable  is  it,  that  in  the 
most  dissolute  age  of  the  empire,  the  power  of  scientific 
law  could  not  be  eradicated  from  the  hearts  of  this 
wonderful  people.  While  the  monster  Commodus  sits 
upon  the  throne,  Papinian  and  Ulpian  occupy  the 
bench,  adding  to  the  civil  code  the  richest  contributions 
of  legal  science !  And  even  the  signatures  of  Caracalla 
and  his  ministers  will  be  found,  not  seldom,  inscribed 
on  the  purest  materials  of  the  Pandects ! 

What,  then,  if  Rome  did  not  excel  in  literature? 
Had  she  not  another  talent  in  her  bosom  quite  as  rich 
and  powerful,  the  sublime  talent  of  law  ?  In  her  civil 
code,  she  has  erected  the  mightiest  monument  of  reason 
and  of  moral  power  that  has  ever  yet  been  raised  by 
human  genius.  The  honest  pride  of  Cicero  was  not 

10* 


114  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

misplaced,  when  lie  said:  "How  admirable  is  the  wis 
dom  of  our  ancestors !  We  alone  are  masters  of  civil 
prudence,  and  our  superiority  is  the  more  conspicuous, 
if  we  deign  to  cast  our  eyes  on  the  rude  and  almost  ri 
diculous  jurisprudence  of  Draco,  Solon  and  Lycurgus." 
Little,  however,  did  he  understand,  when  he  thus  spake, 
what  gift  his  country  was  here  preparing  for  the  human 
race.  Could  he  have  pierced  the  magnificent  future, 
when  this  same  Roman  law  should  have  its  full  scien 
tific  embodiment ;  could  he  hav.e  seen,  at  the  distance 
of  twenty  centuries,  the  barbarians  of  northern  and 
western  Europe  compacted  into  great  civilized  nations, 
and,  after  having  vanquished  the  Eoman  arms  and  em 
pire,  all  quietly  sheltered  under  the  Roman  jurispru 
dence  ;  a  new  continent  rising  to  view,  beyond  the  lost 
Atlantis,  to  be  fostered  in  its  bosom ;  a  spirit  of  law  in 
fused  into  the  whole  realm  of  civilized  mind  and  reveal 
ing  its  energy  now  in  the  common  law  of  England,  now 
in  the  commercial  code,  and,  last  of  all,  in  the  interna 
tional — all  matured  in  the  pervading  light  and  warmth 
of  the  Roman ;  liberty  secured  by  the  security  of  jus 
tice  ;  the  fire  of  the  old  Roman  virtue  burning  still  in 
the  bosom  of  legal  science  and  imparting  a  character  of 
intellectual  and  moral  gravity  to  the  literature,  opinions 
and  life  of  all  cultivated  nations ;  and  then,  to  crown 
the  whole,  the  visible  certainty  that  the  Roman  law  has 
only  just  begun  its  career,  that  it  must  enter  more  and 
more  widely  into  the  fortunes  of  the  race  and  extend 
its  benign  sway  wherever  law  extends,  till  the  globe, 
with  all  its  peoples,  becomes  a  second  Roman  empire, 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  115 

and  time  itself  the  only  date  of  its  sovereignty ; — seeing 
all  this,  the  great  orator  must  have  confessed,  that  every 
conception  he  had  before  entertained  of  the  majesty  and 
grandeur  of  the  Eoman  jurisprudence,  was  weak  enough 
to  be  scarcely  better  than  null.  Our  minds,  even  now, 
can  but  faintly  conceive  the  same. 

Such  is  the  moral  value  of  the  Greek  art  and  litera 
ture,  such  of  the  Eoman  law ;  one  as  a  contribution  to 
the  outward  form  of  virtue,  the  other  to  the  authority 
and  power  of  the  moral  sentiment  itself.  These  are 
gifts  wrought  out  from  below ;  extorted,  as  we  may 
say,  from  society.  It  remains  to  speak  of  a  third 
power,  descending  from  above,  to  bring  the  Divine  Life 
into  history  and  hasten  that  moral  age,  towards  which 
its  lines  are  ever  converging.  Hitherto,  we  have 
^poken  of  causes  developed  by  the  mere  laws  of  soci 
ety,  which  laws,  however,  when  deeply  sounded,  are 
but  another  name  for  God,  conducting  history  to  its 
ends,  by  a  latent  presence  of  supernatural  force.  In 
the  religion  of  Christ  we  are  to  view  him  as  coming 
into  mental  contemplation  objectively  to  the  intellect 
and  heart,  and  operating  thus  as  a  moral  cause.  In  his 
incarnate  person  descending  into  the  world  from  a 
point  above  the  world,  God  shows  an  external  govern 
ment  of  laws  and  retributions,  connected  with  the  inter 
nal  law  of  the  conscience ;  opens  worlds  of  glory  and 
pain  beyond  this  life;  presents  himself  as  an  object  of 
contemplation,  fear,  love  and  desire;  reveals  his  own 
infinite  excellence  and  beauty,  and,  withal,  his  tender- 


116  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

ness  and  persuasive  goodness ;  and  so  pours  the  Divine 
Life  into  the  dark  and  soured  bosom  of  sin. 

But  you  will  perceive  that  a  certain  degree  of  intel 
lectual  refinement  and  moral  advancement  was  neces 
sary  to  make  the  approach  of  so  great  excellence  and 
beauty  intelligible.  A  race  of  beings  immersed  in  the 
wild  superstitions  of  fetichism  could  not  receive  the  di 
vine.  And,  therefore,  it  was  not  till  the  Greek  letters 
and  the  Roman  sovereignty  were  extended  through  the 
world,  that  Jesus  Christ  made  his  appearance.  He  is, 
at  once,  the  Perfect  Beauty  and  the  Eternal  Rule  of 
God ;  the  Life  of  God  manifested  under  the  conditions 
of  humanity;  by  sufferings,  expressing  the  Love  of 
God ;  by  love,  attracting  man  to  his  breast.  Now  there 
enters  into  human  history  a  divine  force  which  is  not 
latent.  The  law  from  within  meets  the  objective  real 
ity  and  beauty  of  God  from  without ;  conscience  links 
with  a  government  above,  and  morality  is  taken  up 
into  the  bosom  of  religion. 

I  will  not  trace  the  historical  action  of  Christianity, 
or  show  how  it  has  subordinated  and  wrought  in  all 
other  causes,  such  as  I  have  named.  Every  one  knows 
that  this  new  religion,  sprung  of  so  humble  a  begin 
ning,  has  had  force  enough,  somehow,  to  take  the  rule 
of  human  society  for  the  last  eighteen  hundred  years. 
Ancient  learning,  ancient  customs  and  religions,  emi 
grations,  wars  and  diplomacies,  all  the  foundations  of 
thrones  and  the  bulwarks  of  empire,  have  floated,  as 
straws,  on  this  flood.  And  now  it  is  much  to  say,  that 
where  we  are,  thither  Christianity  has  borne  us,  and 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  117 

what  we  are  in  art,  literature,  commerce,  law  and  lib 
erty,  Christianity,  appropriating  all  previous  advances, 
has  made  us. 

I  will  only  point  you,  beside,  to  a  single  symptom  of 
the  times,  which  shows  you  whither  human  history  is 
going.  It  is  a  remarkable  distinction  of  the  present 
era,  that  we  are  deriving  rules  of  common  life  and  obli 
gation  from  considerations  of  BENEFICENCE.  We  •  per 
ceive  that  the  internal  law  of  the  conscience  includes 
not  only  justice  but  love.  The  spirit  of  Christianity, 
as  revealed  in  the  life  of  Jesus,  has  so  far  infused  itself 
into  human  bosoms,  that  we  feel  bound  to  act,  not  as 
fellow  men,  but  as  brothers  to  the  race.  We  propose 
what  is  useful,  we  reason  of  what  is  beneficent.  Gov 
ernment,  we  claim,  is  a  trust  for  the  equal  benefit  of 
subjects.  As  individuals  we  are  concluded,  in  all  mat 
ters,  by  the  necessities  of  public  virtue  and  happiness. 
All  the  old  rules  of  morality,  which  hung  upon  the  cold 
er  principle  of  justice,  are  suffering  a  revision  to  execute 
the  principle  of  love,  and  everything  in  public  law  and 
private  duty  is  coming  to  the  one  test  of  beneficence. 

Here  I  will  rest  my  argument.  I  undertook  to  show 
you  that  human  history  ascends  from  the  physical  to 
the  moral,  and  must  ultimately  issue  in  a  moral  age.  I 
first  exhibited  the  fact  of  a  two-fold  progress  in  past 
history,  accordant  with  the  two-fold  nature  of  the  moral 
code.  What  stupendous  events  and  overturnings  are, 
hereafter,  to  come  pouring  their  floods  into  the  currents 
of  human  history,  we  can  not  know  or  conjecture;  but 


118  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

I  have  brought  into  view  three  great  moral  forces,  of 
whose  future  operation,  as  of  whose  past,  we  may  well 
be  confident — the  Greek  Art,  the  Boman  Law,  and  the 
Christian  Faith.  These  three  being  indestructible,  in 
capable  of  death,  must  roll  on,  down  the  whole  future 
of  man,  and  work  their  effects  in  his  history.  And,  if 
we  are  sure  of  this,  we  are  scarcely  less  sure  of  an  age 
of  law,  or  of  the  final  ascendency  of  the  intellectual  and 
moral  life  of  the  race. 

I  anticipate  no  perfect  state,  such  as  fills  the  over 
heated  fancy  of  certain  dreamers.  The  perfectibility  of 
man  is  forever  excluded  here,  by  the  tenor  of  his  exist 
ence.  He  is  here  in  a  flood  of  successive  generations, 
to  make  experiment  of  evil,  to  learn  the  worth  of  virtue 
in  the  loss  of  it,  and  by  such  knowledge  be  at  last  con 
firmed  in  it.  As  long,  therefore,  as  he  is  here,  evil  will 
be,  and  life  will  be  a  contest  with  it. 

But  a  day  will  come,  when  the  dominion  of  ignorance 
and  physical  force,  when  distinctions  of  blood  and  the 
accidents  of  fortune,  will  cease  to  rule  the  world. 
Beauty,  reason,  science,  personal  worth  and  religion 
will  come  into  their  rightful  supremacy,  and  moral, 
forces  will  preside  over  physical  as  mind  over  the  body. 
Liberty  and  equality  will  be  so  far  established  that 
every  man  will  have  a  right  to  his  existence,  and,  if  he 
can  make  it  so,  to  an  honorable,  powerful  and  happy 
existence.  Policy  will  cease  to  be  the  same  as  cunning, 
and  become  a  study  of  equity  and  reason.  It  is  impos 
sible  that  wars  should  not  be  discontinued,  if  not  by  the 
progress  of  the  international  code,  as  we  have  hinted, 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  119 

yet  by  the  progress  of  liberty  and  intelligence ;  for  the 
masses  who  have  hitherto  composed  the  soldiery,  must 
sometime  discover  the  folly  of  dying,  as  an  ignoble 
herd,  to  serve  the  passions  of  a  few  reckless  politicians, 
or  to  give  a  name  for  prowess  to  leaders  whose  bravery 
consists  in  marching  them  into  danger.  The  arbitra 
ment  of  arms  is  not  a  whit  less  absurd  than  the  old 
English  trial  by  battle,  and  before  the  world  has  done 
rolling,  they  will  both  be  classed  together.  Habits  of 
temperance  must  result  in  a  gradual  improvement  of 
the  physical  stature  and  intellectual  capacity  of  the  race. 
The  enormous  expenditures  of  war  and  vice  being  dis 
continued,  and  invention,  aided  by  science,  having  got 
the  mastery  of  nature,  so  as  to  make  production  more 
copious  and  easy,  the  laboring  classes  will  be  able  to 
live  in  comparatively  leisure  and  elegance,  and  find 
ample  time  for  self-improvement. 

Now  begins  the  era  of  genius ;  for  all  the  mind  there 
is,  being  brought  into  action,  and  that  in  the  best  con 
ditions  of  intellectual  health,  it  must  result  that  the  em 
inent  minds  will  tower  as  much  higher,  as  the  level 
whence  they  rise  is  more  elevated.  The  old  leaden  at 
mosphere  of  a  physical  age  will  be  displaced  by  an  in 
tellectual  atmosphere,  quickening  to  the  breath  and  full 
of  the  music  of  new  thoughts.  Society  being  delivered 
of  all  that  is  low,  and  raised  to  a  general  condition  of 
comfort  and  beauty,  will  become  a  new  and  more  in 
spiring  element.  The  general  peace  of  nations  and  the 
nobler  peace  of  virtue,  will  make  the  reflective  faculty 
as  a  clear  sounding  bell  in  a  calm  day  ;  every  depth  of 


120  THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW. 

nature  will  be  sounded  and  brought  into  the  clear 
light  of  philosophy.  The  imagination  will  be  pu 
rified  by  the  subjection  of  the  passions,  and  fired 
by  the  vigor  of  a  faith  that  sees,  in  all  things  visi 
ble,  vehicles  of  the  invisible,  in  everything  finite,  a  sym 
bol  of  infinity. 

But,  what  is  the  greatest  pre-eminence,  it  will  come 
to  pass  that,  as  the  ideal  of  the  Greeks  was  beauty,  and 
that  of  the  Eomans  law,  so  this  new  age  shall  embrace 
an  ideal  more  comprehensive,  as  it  is  higher  than  all, 
namely,  Love.  The  magnificent  genius  of  Plato  at 
tained  to  some  indistinct  conception  of  this  same  thing, 
in  that  intellectual  love,  so  much  extolled  by  him,  as 
being  the  power  of  all  that  is  divine  in  virtue — the  love 
of  kindred  souls  thirsting  after  truth,  and  tracing  back 
their  way  to  that  bright  essence,  whose  image  they 
dimly  remember,  and  which,  having  cast  its  shadow  on 
them  in  some  previous  state,  made  them  forever  kindred 
to  each  other  and  to  it.  But  the  love  of  which  I  speak 
is  this  and  more — a  love  to  souls  not  kindred,  a  love  of 
action  and  of  power,  as  well  as  of  sentiment  and  of  mu 
tual  affinity.  This  love  is  no  partial  idea,  as  every 
other  must  be ;  it  is  universal,  it  embraces  all  that  is 
beneficent,  pure,  true,  beautiful;  God,  man;  eternity, 
time.  To  build  up,  to  adorn,  to  increase  enjoyment; 
to  receive  the  whispers  of  that  Original  Love  which  in 
habits  all  the  heights  and  depths;  to  sing  out  the 
rhythm  and  eternal  harmony  of  that  music  wherewith 
it  fills,  not  the  stars  only,  but  all  the  recesses  of  being ; 
to  go  up  into  the  heights  of  reason  after  its  plan,  and 


THE     GROWTH     OF     LAW.  121 

lay 'the  head  of  philosophy  on  its  bosom;  to  weep,  re 
joice  and  tremble  before  it,  everywhere  present,  every 
where  warm  and  luminous,  palpitating  in  all  that  lives, 
blushing  into  all  that  is  beautiful,  bursting  out  as  a  fire, 
in  all  that  is  terrible — thus  employed,  filled  with  this 
love,  as  by  a  storm  falling  out  of  heaven,  lifted  and  ce 
lestially  empowered  by  it,  the  new  moral  age  must 
needs  unfold  a  regenerated  capacity  and  construct  a  lit 
erature,  more  nearly  divine,  than  has  yet  been  con 
ceived.  All  that  is  great  in  action,  disinterested  in 
suffering,  strong  in  the  abhorrence  of  evil,  beautiful  in 
art,  wise  in  judgment,  deep  in  science— the  keen,  the 
soft,  the  wrathful  and  piercing,  as  well  as  the  gentle  and 
patient — every  side  and  capacity  of  mind  will  display 
itself,  and  as  the  talent  of  the  Creator  unfolds  its  gran 
deur  in  love,  so  by  love,  the  talent  of  his  creature  will 
roll  out  into  that  full-toned  harmony  of  act  and  power 
which  constitutes  the  distinction  of  genius. 

Brothers  in  letters,  I  may  not  close  without  some 
reference  more  personal  'to  ourselves  and  closer  to  the 
occasion.  We  are  here,  once  more,  in  the  classic  shades 
where  our  youthful  beginnings  were  nurtured.  We 
most  filially  venerate  and  love  the  place.  Nowhere 
else  does  memory  drop  the  element  of  tense  and  be 
come  experience  as  here.  Our  youth  returns  upon  us ; 
its  day-dreams  even  are  here,  as  we  left  them,  floating 
on  the  air  and  resting  in  the  trees.  As  now  our  hearts 
are  open  to  ingenuous  feeling,  let  us  take  to  ourselves 
one  more  lesson  before  we  part,  and  resolve  to  wed 

11 


122  THE    GKOWTII    OF    LAW. 

ourselves,  unchangeably,  to  the  good  of  mankind  and 
the  final  triumph  of  right. 

First  of  all  let  us,  as  scholars,  have  faith  in  the  fu 
ture.  No  man  was  ever  inspired  through  his  memory. 
The  eye  of  Genius  is  not  behind.  ISTor  was  there  ever 
a  truly  great  man,  whose  ideal  was  in  the  past.  The 
offal  of  history  is  good  enough  for  'worms  and  monks, 
but  it  will  not  feed  a  living  man.  Power  moves  in  the 
direction  of  hope.  If  we  can  not  hope,  if  we  see  noth 
ing  so  good  for  history  as  to  reverse  it,  we  shrink  from 
the  destiny  of  our  race,  and  the  curse  of  all  impotence  is 
on  us.  Legions  of  men,  who  dare  not  set  their  face  the 
way  that  time  is  going,  are  powerless ;  you  may  push 
them  back  with  a  straw.  They  have  lost  their  virility, 
their  soul  is  gone  out.  They  are  owls  flying  towards  the 
dawn  and  screaming,  with  dazzled  eyes,  that  light  should 
invade  their  prescriptive  and  congenial  darkness. 

Every  scholar  should  be  so  far  imbued  with  the  phi 
losophic  spirit,  as  to  remember  that  ways  and  manners, 
which  stand  well  with  prescription,  do  not  always  stand 
well  with  reason,  and  that  respectable  practice  is  often 
most  respectably  assaulted.  Suffer  no  effeminate  dis 
gusts  ;  neither  always  be  repelled,  when  a  good  object 
is  maintained  by  crude  and  even  pernicious  arguments. 
Men  are  often  wiser  in  their  ends  than  in  their  reasons, 
and,  if  we  see  them  staggering  after  the  light,  our  duty 
is  not  to  mock  them,  but  to  lead  them.  Consider  how 
God  has  stood  by  man's  history  and  labored  with  him 
in  his  crudest  follies,  and  even  by  means  of  them  con 
trived  to  help  him  on. 


THE    GROWTH    OF    LAW.  123 

We  have  a  country  where  the  legislation  of  right  is 
free  as  it  never  was  before  in"  any  other.  Everything 
true,  just,  pure,  good,  great,  can  here  unfold  itself  with 
out  obstruction.  To  say  that  we  are  called  to  be  a 
nation  of  lawgivers,  in  the  public  constitution,  is  not 
all ;  we  are  called  to  be  lawgivers  in  a  higher  and  more 
sacred  capacity.  Political  law,  as  supported  by  force, 
is  here  weak,  that  it  may  be  strong  as  supported  by 
reason.  Our  institutions  postulate,  in  everything,  a 
a  condition  of  love  to  the  right,  and  their  destiny  is  to 
be  magnificent,  as  it  is  a  destiny  of  principle  and  truth. 

Be  it  then  our  part,  as  scholars,  to  be  lawgivers, 
bringing  forth  to  men  the  determinations  of  reason,  and 
assisting  them  to  construct  the  science  of  goodness. 
And  consider  that  it  is  sound  opinion,  not  multitudi 
nous  opinion,  that  takes  the  force  of  law.  Have  faith 
in  truth,  never  in  numbers.  The  great  surge  of  num 
bers  rolls  up  noisily  and  imposingly,  but  flats  out  on 
the  shore,  and  slides  back  into  the  mud  of  oblivion. 
But  a  true  opinion  is  the  ocean  itself,  calm  in  its  rest, 
eternal  in  its  power.  The  storms  and  tumultuous 
thunders  of  popular  rage  and  bigoted  wrong  will  some 
time  pause,  in  their  travel  round  the  sphere,  and  listen 
to  its  powerful  voice.  And  if  the  night  comes  down  to 
veil  it  for  a  time,  it  is  still  there,  beating  on  with  the  same 
victorious  pulse  and  waiting  for  the  day.  A  right  opin 
ion  can  not  die,  for  its  life  is  in  moral  ideas,  which  is  the 
life  of  God.  Have  patience,  and  it  shall  come  to  pass,  in 
due  time,  that  what  you  rested  in  the  tranquillity  of  rea 
son,  has  been  crowned  with  the  majesty  of  law. 


IV. 

THE  FOUNDERS  GREAT  IN  THEIR  UNCONSCIOUSNESS* 


GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  SOCIETY  : 

IT  is  a  filial  sentiment,  most  honorably  signified  by 
you,  in  the  organization  of  your  Society,  and  the  regu 
lar  observance  of  this  anniversary,  that  the  founders 
and  first  fathers  of  states  are  entitled  to  the  highest 
honors.  You  agree,  in  this,  with  the  fine  philosophic 
scale  of  awards  offered  by  Lord  Bacon,  when  he  says, 
"  The  true  marshaling  of  the  degrees  of  sovereign  hon 
ors  are  these :  In  the  first  place,  are  Gonditores ;  found 
ers  of  states.  In  the  second  place,  are  Legislator es  ;  law 
givers,  which  are  sometimes  called  second-founders,  or 
Perpetui  Principes,  because  they  govern  by  their  ordi 
nances  after  they  are  gone.  In  the  third  place,  are  Lib- 
eratores  •  such  as  compound  the  long  miseries  of  civil 
wars,  or  deliver  their  countries  from  the  servitude  of 
strangers  or  tyrants.  In  the  fourth  place,  are  Propaga- 
toreSj  or  Propugnatores  imperil;  such  as  in  honorable 
wars  enlarge  their  territories,  or  make  noble  defense 
against  invaders.  And  in  the  last  place,  Patres  patrice, 

*  Delivered  as  an  Oration'  before  the  New  England  Society  of  New 
York,  Dec.  21,  A.  D.  1849. 


THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT,     ETC.  125 

which  reign  justly,  and  make  the  times  good  wherein 
they  live." 

Holding  this  true  scale  of  honor,  which  you  may  the 
more  heartily  do,  because  you  have  fathers  who  are  en 
titled  to  reverence  for  their  worth  as  well  as  their  his 
toric  position,  you  have  undertaken  to  remember,  and 
with  due  observances  to  celebrate,  each  year,  this 
twenty-second  day  of  December,  as  the  day  Conditorum 
Reipiiblicce.  Be  it  evermore  a  day,  such  as  may  fitly 
head  the  calendar  of  our  historic  honors;  a  day  that 
remembers  with  thoughtful  respect  and  reverence  the 
patience  of  oppressed  virtue,  the  sacrifices  of  duty,  and 
the  solemn  fatherhood  of  religion ; — a  register  also  of 
progress,  showing  every  year  by  what  new  triumphs 
and  results  of  good,  spreading  in  wider  circles  round 
the  globe,  that  Being  whose  appropriate  work  it  is  to 
crown  the  fidelity  of  faithful  men,  is  Himself  justifying 
your  homage,  and  challenging  the  homage  of  mankind. 

Meantime,  be  this  one  caution  faithfully  observed, 
that  all  prescriptive  and  stipulated  honors  have  it  as 
their  natural  infirmity  to  issue  in  extravagant  and 
forced  commendations,  and  so  to  mar  not  seldom  the 
reverence  they  would  fortify.  We  pay  the  truest  hon 
ors  to  men  that  are  worthy,  not  by  saying  all  imagina 
ble  good  concerning  them :  least  of  all  can  we  do  fit 
honor,  in  this  manner,  to  the  fathers  of  New  England. 
It  as  little  suits  the  dignity  of  truth,  as  the  iron  rigor  of 
the  men.  If  it  be  true,  as  we  often  hear,  that  one  may 
be  most  effectually  "damned  by  faint  praise;"  it  may 

11* 


126  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

also  be  done  as  fatally,  by  what  is  even  more  unjust 
and,  to  genuine  merit,  more  insupportable,  by  over- 
vehement  and  undistinguishing  eulogy.  We  make  al 
lowance  for  the  subtractions  of  envy ;  but  when  love 
invents  fictitious  grounds  of  applause,  we  imagine  some 
fatal  defect  of  those  which  are  real  and  true.  There  is 
no  genuine  praise  but  the  praise  of  justice: 

"For  fume  impatient  of  extremes,  decays 
Not  less  by  envy,  than  excess  of  praise." 

In  this  view,  it  will  not  be  an  offense  to  you,  I  trust, 
or  be  deemed  adverse  to  the  real  spirit  of  the  occasion, 
if  I  suggest  the  conviction  that  our  New  England  fa 
thers  have  sometimes  suffered  in  this  manner — not  by 
any  conscious  design  to  over-magnify  their  merit,  but 
by  the  amiable  zeal  of  inconsiderate  and  partially  quali 
fied  eulogy.  In  particular,  it  has  seemed  to  be  a  fre 
quent  detraction  from  their  merit,  that  results  are  as 
cribed  to  their  wisdom,  or  sagacious  forethought  as  pro 
jectors,  which  never  even  came  into  their  thoughts  at 
all ;  and  which,  taken  only  as  proofs  of  a  Providential 
purpose  working  in  them,  and  of  God's  faithful  adher 
ence  to  their  history,  would  have  yielded  a  more  rever 
ent  tribute  to  Him,  and  raised  them  also  to  a  far  higher 
pitch  of  sublimity  in  excellence.  The  very  greatness 
of  these  men,  as  it  seems  to  me,  is  their  unconsciousness. 
It  is  that  so  little  conceiving  the  future  they  had  in 
them,  they  had  a  future  so  magnificent — that  God  was 
}n  them  in  a  latent  power  of  divinity  and  world- 
ilisposing  counsel  which  they  did  not  suspect,  in  a  wis 
dom  wiser  than  they  knew,  in  principles  more  quicken- 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  127 

ing  and  transforming  than  they  could  even  imagine 
themselves,  and  was  thus  preparing  in  them,  to  lift  the 
whole  race  into  a  higher  plane  of  existence,  and  one  as 
much  closer  to  Himself. 

And  just  here  is  the  difficulty  that  most  consciously 
oppresses  me  in  the  engagement  of  the  present  occasion. 
It  is  to  praise  these  great  men  justly — to  say  what  is  fit 
to  them  and  not  unfit  to  God.  It  is  to  make  uncon 
sciousness  in  good  the  crown  of  sublimity  in  good ;  to 
set  it  forth  as  their  special  glorj^,  in  this  view,  that  they 
executed  by  duty  and  the  stern  fidelity  of  their  lives, 
what  they  never  propounded  in  theory,  or  set  up  as  a 
mark  of  attainment — so  to  meet  the  spirit  of  the  occa 
sion,  and  to  raise  in  you  the  fit  measure  of  enthusiasm, 
by  the  sober  wine  alone  of  justice  and  truth. 

Do  I  then  deny  what  has  been  so  often  observed  in 
the  great  characters  of  history,  that  they  commonly  act 
their  part  under  a  visible  sense  or  presentiment  of  the 
greatness  of  their  mission  ?  Is  it  a  fiction  that  they  are 
thus  exalted  in  it,  made  impassible,  borne  along  as  by 
some  fate  or  destiny,  or,  to  give  it  a  more  Christian 
name,  some  inspiration  or  call  of  God?  Nothing  is 
more  true;  it  is  in  fact  the  standing  distinction  the 
sublimity  itself  of  greatness. 

*'  Souls  destined  to  o'erleap  the  vulgar  lot, 
And  mould  the  world  unto  the  scheme  of  God, 
Have  a  fore-consciousness  of  their  high  doom." 

Ignorant  of  this,  we  can  not  understand  what  great 
ness  is.  To  us  it  no  longer  exists.  But  we  need,  in 


128  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

the  acceptance  of  a  truth  so  ennobling  to  human  his 
tory,  to  affix  those  terms  and  restrictions  under  which 
it  is  practically  manifested,  else  we  make  even  history 
itself  fantastic  or  incredible. 

Whoever  appears  to  assert  any  great  truth  of  science 
or  religion,  wanted  by  his  age,  ought  to  feel  an  immov 
able  conviction  that  the  truth  asserted  will  prevail,  else 
he  is  no  fit  champion.  But  as  regards  the  particular 
effects  it  will  produce  in  human  society ;  these  he  can 
not  definitely  trace.  He  can  only  know  that,  falling 
into  the  great  currents  of  causes,  complex  and  multi 
tudinous  as  they  are,  some  good  and  beneficent  results 
will  follow,  that  are  worthy  of  its  divine  scope  and  or 
der.  In  like  manner,  the  hero  of  an  occasion,  exalted 
by  the  occasion  to  be  God's  instrument,  we  may  believe 
is  sometimes  gifted  with  a  confidence  that  is  nearly  pro 
phetic,  and  by  force  of  which  he  is  able  to  inspire 
others  with  a  courage  equal  to  the  greatness  of  the  en 
counter.  Thus  it  was  that  Luther,  in  virtue  of  a  confi 
dence  that  other  men  had  not,  became  the  hero  of  the 
Reformation.  But  when  we  speak  of  inventions,  insti 
tutions,  policies,  migrations,  revolutions,  which  are  not 
single  truths  or  occasions,  but  inaugurations  of  causes 
that  can  reveal  their  issues  only  in  the  lapse  of  centu 
ries,  the  projectors  and  leaders  in  these  can  be  sure,  at 
most,  only  of  the  grand  ideal  that  inspires  them ;  but 
by  what  medial  changes  and  turns  of  history  God  will 
bring  it  to  pass,  or  in  what  definite  forms  of  social  good 
it  will  finally  clothe  itself,  they  can  but  dimly  conceive. 

And  this  is  what  I  mean,  when  I  speak  of  the  uncon- 


IN    THEIR     UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  129 

scious,  or  undesigning  agency  of  the  fathers  of  New 
England,  considered  as  the  authors  of  those  great  polit 
ical  and  social  issues  which  we  now  look  upon  as  the 
highest  and  crowning  distinctions  of  our  history.  Their 
ideal  was  not  in  these,  but  in  issues  still  farther  on  and 
more  magnificent,  to  which  these  are  only  Providential 
media  or  means.  Occupied  by  the  splendor  of  these 
medial  stages  of  advancement,  and  unable  to  imagine 
anything  yet  more  glorious  to  be  revealed  hereafter,  we 
conclude  that  we  have  reached  the  final  result  and  his 
toric  completion  of  our  destiny ;  and  then  we  cast  about 
us  to  ask  what  our  sublime  fathers  attempted,  and  settle 
a  final  judgment  of  their  merits.  Sometimes  we  smile 
at  their  simplicity,  finding  that  the  highest  hope  they 
conceived  in  their  migration,  was  nothing  but  the  hope 
of  some  good  issue  for  religion  !  We  secretly  wonder, 
or,  it  may  be,  openly  express  our  regret,  that  they  could 
not  have  had  some  conception  of  the  magnificent  results 
of  liberty  and  social  order  that  were  here  to  be  revealed. 
And  in  this  view,  we  often  set  ourselves  to  it,  as  a  kind 
of  filial  duty,  to  make  out  for  them  w^hat  we  so  much 
desire. 

Who  of  us,  meantime,  is  able,  for  once,  to  imagine 
that  the  shortness  may  be  ours,  the  prophecy  and  the 
greatness  theirs  ?  We  want  them  to  be  heroes,  but  we 
can  not  allow  them  to  be  heroes  of  faith.  This  indeed' 
is  a  great  day  for  heroes,  and  our  literature  is  at  work, 
as  in  a  trade,  upon  the  manufacture.  But  it  will  some 
time  be  discovered  that,  in  actual  life,  there  are  two 
kinds  of  heroes — heroes  for  the  visible,  and  heroes  for 


130  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

the  invisible;  they  that  see  their  mark  hung  out  as  a 
flag  to  be  taken  on  some  turret  or  battlement,  and  they 
that  see  it  nowhere,  save  in  the  grand  ideal  of  the  in 
ward  life ;  extempore  heroes  fighting  out  a  victory  defi 
nitely  seen  in  something  near  at  hand,  and  the  life-long, 
century -long,  heroes  that  are  instigated  by  no  ephemeral 
crown  or  more  ephemeral  passion,  but  have  sounded  the 
deep  base-work  of  God's  principle,  and  have  dared 
calmly  to  rest  their  all  upon  it,  come  the  issue  where  it 
may,  or  when  it  may,  or  in  what  form  God  will  give  it. 
The  former  class  are  only  symbols,  I  conceive,  in  the 
visible  life  of  that  more  heroic  and  truly  divine  great 
ness  in  the  other,  which  is  never  offered  to  the  eyes  in 
forms  of  palpable  achievement.  These  latter  are  God's 
heroes — heroes  all  of  faith;  the  other  belong  to  us; 
flaming  as  dilettanti  figures  of  art  in  romances,  figuring 
as  gods  in  the  apotheosis  of  pantheistic  literature,  or  it 
may  be  striding  in  real  life  and  action  over  fields  of 
battle  and  pages  of  bloody  renown.  If  our  New  Eng 
land  fathers  do  not  figure  as  conspicuously  in  this  latter 
class  of  heroes  as  some  might  desire,  may  they  not 
sometime  be  seen,  when  the  main  ideal  of  religion  is 
fulfilled,  to  have  been  the  more  truly  great  because  of 
the  remoteness  and  the  sacred  grandeur  of  their  aims  ? 
And  if  the  political  successes  in  which,  as  Americans, 
we  so  properly  indulge  our  pride,  are  but  scintillations 
thrown  off  in  the  onward  career  of  their  historic  aims 
and  purposes,  little  honor  can  it  do  them  to  discover 
that  these  scintillations  are  the  primal  orbs  and  central 
fires  of  their  expectation. 


IX    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  131 

Let  us  offer  them  no  such  injustice.  They  are  not  to 
be  praised  as  a  band  of  successful  visionaries,  coming 
over  to  this  new  world,  in  prophetic  lunacy,  to  get  up  a 
great  republic  and  renovate  human  society  the  world 
over.  They  propound  no  theories  of  social  order. 
They  undertake  not,  in  their  human  will  or  wisdom,  to 
be  a  better  Providence  to  the  nations ;  make  no  prom 
ise  of  the  end  they  will  put  to  all  the  human  ills,  or  of 
melting  off  the  ice  of  the  poles  to  cap  them  with  a  "bo 
real  crown  "  of  felicity. 

Had  they  come  to  build  a  new  future,  in  this  manner, 
by  their  will,  according  to  some  preconceived  theory  of 
their  head,  the  first  awful  year  of  their  settlement  would 
have  broken  their  confidence,  and  left  them  crying,  as 
home-sick  children,  for  some  way  of  return  to  their 
country.  The 

" craven  scruple 

Of  thinking  too  precisely  of  the  event, — 

A  thought  which,  quartered,  hath  but  one  part  wisdom, 

And  ever  three  parts  coward — " 

would  have  shaken  their  fortitude  with  an  ague  as  fatal 
as  that  which,  in  the  first  dreadful  winter,  assailed  the 
life  of  their  bodies — giving  us,  in  their  history,  one 
other  and  quite  unnecessary  proof,  that  man  is  the 
weakest  and  most  irresolute  of  beings  when  he  hangs 
his  purpose  on  his  expectations.  But  coming  in  simple 
duty,  duty  was  their  power — a  divine  fate  in  them, 
whose  thrusting  on  to  greatness  and  triumphant  good, 
took  away  all  questions  from  the  feeble  arbitrament  of 
their  will,  and  made  them  even  impassible  to  their  bur- 


132  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

dens.  And  they  went  on  building  their  unknown  fu 
ture,  the  more  resolutely  because  it  was  unknown. 
For,  though  unknown,  it  was  present  in  its  power' — • 
present,  not  as  in  their  projects  and  wise  theories,  but 
as  a  latent  heat,  concealed  in  their  principles,  and 
works,  and  prayers,  and  secret  love,  to  be  given  out 
and  become  palpable  in  the  world's  cooling,  ages  after. 

Nor  is  this  suggestion  of  a  latent  wisdom  or  law 
present  in  their  migration,  any  conceit  of  the  fancy ;  for 
as  in  the  growth  of  a  man  or  a  tree,  so  also  in  the  pri 
mal  germ  of  nations  and  social  bodies,  there  is  a  secret 
Form  or  Law  present  in  them,  of  which  their  after 
growth  is  scarcely  more  than  a  fit  actualization  or  de 
velopment.  This  secret  germ,  or  presiding  form  of  the 
nascent  order,  has  the  force  also  of  a  creative,  constitu 
tive  instinct  in  the  body,  building  up  that  form  by  a 
wisdom  hid  in  itself;  though  conceived,  in  thought,  by 
no  one  member.  By  this  instinctive  action  languages 
are  struck  out  as  permanent  forms  of  thought,  in  the 
obscurest  and  most  savage  tribes,  squared  by  the  nicest 
principles  of  symmetry  and  grammatic  order,  having 
hid  in  their  single  words  whole  chapters  of  wisdom 
that,  some  thousands  of  years  after,  will  be  opened  by 
a  right  explication,  to  the  astonished  gaze  of  the  philo 
sophic  student.  By  the  same  instinctive  germinal 
force,  unconsciously  present  in  a  people,  the  future  in 
stitutions  and  forms  of  liberty  will  be  constructed ;  just 
as  the  comb  of  the  hive  is  built  by  the  instinctive  ge 
ometry  of  the  hive,  though  not  by  the  geometric  sci- 


IN    THE  IK    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  133 

ence  of  any  one  or  more  single  bees  in  it.  And  some 
what  in  this  manner  it  was  that  our  institutions  were 
present  in  the  fathers  and  founders  of  our  history. 
They  had  in  their  religious  faith  a  high  constructive 
instinct,  raising  them  above  their  age  and  above  them 
selves  ;  creating  in  them  fountains  of  wisdom  deeper 
than  they  consciously  knew,  and  preparing  in  them 
powers  of  benefaction  that  were  to  be  discovered  only 
by  degrees  and  slowly,  to  the  coming  ages.  If  you 
will  show  them  forth  as  social  projectors  or  architects 
of  a  new  democracy,  they  stubbornly  refuse  to  say  or 
do  anything  in  that  fashion.  They  are  found  protesting 
rather  against  your  panegyric  itself.  Or  if  they  have 
come  to  your  acquaintance  overlarded  in  this  manner, 
so  that  you  really  regard  them  as  the  successful  and  de 
liberate  revolutionizers  of  the  modern  age,  you  will 
need  to  wash  off  these  coarse  pigments  and  daubs  of 
eulogy,  as  with  nitre  and  much  soap,  and  set  them  be 
fore  you  shining  in  the  consecrating  oil  of  faith,  before 
you  can  truly  conceive  them  as  the  fathers  of  American 
history.  Their  greatness  is  the  unconscious  greatness 
of  their  simple  fidelity  to  God — the  divine  instinct  of 
good  and  of  wisdom  by  which  God,  as  a  reward  upon 
duty,  made  them  authors  and  founders  of  a  social  state 
under  forms  'appointed  by  Himself. 

It  has  been  already  assumed  in  this  general  outline 
of  my  subject,  that  the  practical  aim  or  ideal  of  our  fa 
thers,  in  their  migration  to  the  new  world,  was  religion. 
This  was  the  star  of  the  East  that  guided  them  hither. 

12 

/ 


13-i  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

They  came  as  to  the  second  cradle-place  of  a  renovated 
Messiahship.  They  declare  it  formally  themselves, 
when  they  give,  as  the  principal  reason  of  their  under 
taking,  "the  great  hope  and  inward  zeal  they  had  of 
laying  some  good  foundation  for  the  propagating  and 
advancing  the  kingdom  of  Christ,  in  these  remote  parts 
of  the  world."* 

It  appears,  however,  that  they  had  a  retrospective  ref 
erence,  in  their  thoughts,  as  well  as  the  prospective  ex 
pectation  here  stated.  Thus,  it  is  affirmed  by  Mr.  Hil- 
dersham,  who  had  full  opportunity  to  know  their  pre 
cise  designs,  that  the  colonists,  as  a  body,  before  com 
ing  over,  "  agreed  in  nothing  further,  than  in  this  gen 
eral  principle — that  the  reformation  of  the  Church  was 
to  be  endeavored  according  to  the  word  of  God."f 
But  precisely  what,  or  how  much  they  intended  by 
this,  will  be  seen  nowhere  else,  with  so  great  clearness, 
as  in  the  ever  memorable  parting  address  which  Eobin- 
son  made  to  the  Pilgrims,  at  their  embarkation.  Here 
we  behold  the  real  flame  of  their  great  idea.  He  said : 

"I  charge  you  before  God  and  his  blessed  angels, 
that  you  follow  me  no  further  than  I  have  followed 
Christ.  And  if  God  shall  reveal  anything  to  you,  by 
any  other  instrument  of  His,  be  as  ready  to  receive  it 
as  you  ever  were  to  receive  anything  by  my  ministry ; 
for  I  arn  confident  that  God  hath  more  truth  yet  to 
break  forth  out  of  His  holy  word.  I  can  not  suffi 
ciently  bewail  the  condition  of  the  Eeformed  churches, 
who  have  come  to  a  period  in  religion,  and  will  go  no 

*  Young's  rhronicle.s,  p.  4V.  t  Cotton  Mather,  p.  18. 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  135 

further  than  the  instruments  of  their  reformation.  The 
Lutherans  can  not  be  driven  to  go  b.eyond  Luther ;  for 
whatever  part  of  God's  will  he  hath  further  imparted 
by  Calvin,  they  will  rather  die  than  embrace  it.  And 
so  also  the  Calvinists  stick  where  Calvin  left  them — a 
misery  much  to  be  lamented.  For  though  they  both 
were  shining  lights  in  their  times,  yet  God  hath  not  re 
vealed  his  whole  will  to  them.  Eemember  now  your 
church  covenant,  whereby  you  engage  with  God  and 
one  another,  to  receive  whatever  light  shall  be  made 
known  to  you  from  His  written  word.  For  it  is  not 
possible  that  the  Christian  world  is  so  lately  come  out 
of  such  thick  anti-Christian  darkness,  and  that  full  per 
fection  of  knowlege  should  break  forth  at  once."* 

A  most  remarkable  passage  of  history,  in  which  this 
truly  great  man  is  seen  asserting  a  position,  at  least  two 
whole  centuries  in  advance  of  his  age.  His  residence 
abroad,  among  so  many  forms  of  opinion  and  of  order, 
has  quickened  in  his  mind  the  germ  of  a  true  compre 
hensive  movement.  He  also  perceives  the  impossibil 
ity  that  the  full  maturity  of  truth  and  order  should 
have  burst  forth  in  a  day,  as  distinctly  as  a  philosophic 
historian  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  Reformation, 
he  is  sure,  is  no  complete  thing — probably  it  is  more 
incomplete  than  any  one  has  yet  been  able  to  imagine. 
And  then  he  has  the  faith  to  accept  his  own  conclusion. 
Sending  out  the  little  half-flock  of  his  church,  across 
the  wide  ocean,  he  bids  them  go  to  watch  for  light ;  and 
there,  in  the  free  wilderness  of  nature,  unrestrained  by 

*  Young's  Chronicles,  p.  306-7. 


136  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

his   own   teachings,   to  complete,   if  possible,   the  un 
known  measure  of  Holy  Reformation. 

This  was  the  errand  he  gave  them,  and  in  this  we 
have  the  fixed  ideal  of  their  undertaking.  And  they 
meant  by  "  reformation,"  all  that  Grod  should  teach  them 
and  their  children  of  the  coming  ages,  by  the  light  that 
should  break  forth  from  His  holy  word — all  that  was 
needed  to  prepare  the  purity  and  universal  spread  of 
Christian  truth,  and  open  to  mankind  the  reign  of 
Christ  in  its  full  felicity  and  glory.  They  fixed  no 
limits.  It  might  include  more  than  they  at  present 
thought,  or  could  even  dare  to  think.  Still  they  had 
courage  to  say — "Let  the  reformation  come  in  God's 
measures,  and  as  He  himself  will  shape  it."  And  for 
this,  they  entered,  with  a  stout  heart,  upon  the  perils 
and  privations  of  their  most  perilous  undertaking. 
Doubtless  they  had  the  natural  feelings  of  men,  but 
they  were  going  to  bear  the  ark  of  the  Almighty,  and 
could  not  painfully  fear.  Robinson  had  said — and  he 
knew  what  was  in  them — "It  is  not  with  us  as  with 
other  men,  whom  small  things  discourage,  and  small 
discontents  cause  to  wish  themselves  home  again."" 
Confidence  most  sublime!  justified  by  a  history  of  pa 
tience  equally  sublime.  We  shall  see,  before  I  close, 
whether  the  errand  of  religious  reformation,  thus  ac 
cepted,  was  an  illusion,  or  whether  it  contained,  in  fact, 
the  spring  of  all  our  political  successes,  and  of  other 
and  still  greater  that  are  yet  to  come. 

.  *  Young's  Chronicles,  p.  61. 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  137 

Let  us  pause  a  moment  here  and  change  the  scene. 
We  will  leave  the  "pinched  fanatics"  of  Leyden,  as 
they  are  sometimes  called,  weeping  their  farewell  on 
Robinson's  neck,  and  turn  ourselves  to  England.  As 
cending  out  of  the  dull  and  common-place  level  of  re 
ligion,  we  will  breathe,  a  moment,  in  the  higher  plane 
of  wisdom  and  renowned  statesmanship.  The  philoso 
pher  and  sage  of  St.  Albans,  hereafter  to  be  celebrated 
as  the  father  of  modern  science,  sits  at  his  table,  in  the 
deep  silence  of  study,  preparing  a  solemn  gift  of  wis 
dom  for  his  countrymen.  His  brow  hangs  heavy  over 
his  desk,  and  the  glow  of  his  majestic  face,  and  the 
clear  lustre  of  his  meditative  eye,  reveal  the  mighty 
soul  discoursing  with  the  inward  oracle.  The  noble 
property-holders  and  chartered  land-companies  of  the 
realnrare  discoursing,  everywhere,  of  the  settlement  of 
colonies  in  the  new  world,  and  discussing  the  causes  of 
failure  in  the  settlements  heretofore  attempted — he  has 
taken  up  the  theme,  and  is  writing  his  essay  "  Of  Plan 
tations."  And  the  advice  he  offers  to  their  guidance  is 
summarily  this — Make  a  beginning,  not  with  "the 
scum  of  the  people,"  but  with  a  fair  collection  of  single 
men,  who  are  good  in  all  the  several  trades  of  industry. 
Make  as  much  as  possible  of  the  spontaneous  products 
of  the  country,  such  as  nuts  and  esculent  roots;  but 
expect  to  support  the  plantation,  in  great  part,  by  sup 
plies  from  the  mother  country,  for  the  first  twenty 
years,  and  'let  the  supplies  be  dealt  out  carefully,  "as 
in  a  besieged  town."  "As  to  government,  let  it  be  in 
the  hands  of  one,  assisted  with  some  counsel,  and  let 

12* 


138  THE    FOUNDEKS    GEEAT 

them  have  commission  to  exercise  martial  laws  with 
some  limitations."  "When  the  plantation  grows  to 
strength,  then  it  is  time  to  plant  with  women  as  with 
men." 

Need  I  stay  to  imagine,  before  an  American  audi 
ence,  what  kind  of  history  must  follow  a  plantation  or 
dered  in  this  manner — a  plantation  without  the  family 
state,  without  the  gentle  strengthening  influence  of  wo 
man,  governed  by  a  single  head,  under  martial  law ! 

Behold  the  little  May  Flower  rounding,  now,  the 
southern  cape  of  England — filled  with  husbands  and 
wives  and  children,  families  of  righteous  men,  under 
"covenant  with  God  and  each  other,"  "to  lay  some 
good  foundation  for  religion :" — engaged  both  to  make 
and  to  keep  their  own  laws,  expecting  to  supply  their 
own  wants  and  bear  their  own  burdens,  assisted  by 
none  but  the  God  in  whom  they  trust.  Here  are  the 
hands  of  industry!  the  germs  of  liberty!  the  dear 
pledges  of  order !  and  the  sacred  beginnings  of  a  home ! 

That  was  the  wisdom  of  St.  Albans — this  of  Leyden. 
Bacon  is  there — Robinson  is  here.  There  was  the  deep 
sagacity  of  human  statesmanship — here  is  the  divine 
oracle  of  duty  and  religion.  0  religion  !  religion !  true 
daughter  of  God !  wiser  in  action  than  genius  itself  in 
theory  !  How  visible,  in  such  a  contrast,  is  the  truth, 
that  whatever  is  wisest  in  thought  and  most  heroic  in 
impulse,  flows  down  upon  men  from  the  summits  of  re 
ligion — and  is,  in  fact,  a  divine  birth  in  souls ! 

We  are  not,  then,  to  conceive,  and  must  not  attempt 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  139 

to  show,  that  our  fathers  undertook  the  migration  with 
any  political  objects  in  view ;  least  of  all  as  distinctly 
proposing  to  lay  the  foundations  of  a  great  republic. 
Their  end  was  religion,  simply  and  only  religion.  Out 
upon  the  lone  ocean,  feeling  their  way  cautiously,  as  it 
were,  through  the  unknown  waves,  exploring,  in  their 
busy  fancies  and  their  prayers,  the  equally  unknown 
future  before  them,  they  as  little  conceived  that  they 
had  in  their  ship  the  germ  of  a  vast  republic  that,  in 
two  centuries,  would  command  the  respect  and  attract 
the  longing  desires  of  the  nations,  as  they  saw  with 
their  eyes  the  lonely  wastes  about  them  whitening  with 
the  sails  and  foaming  under  the  swift  ships  of  that  re 
public,  already  become  the  first  commercial  power  of 
the  world.  The  most  sanguine  expectation  of  theirs  I 
have  anywhere  discovered,  which,  however,  was  not 
political,  but  religious,  was  ventured  by  Gov.  Bradford, 
viz. : — "  That  as  one  small  candle  may  light  a  thousand, 
so  the  light  kindled  here  may,  in  some  sort,  shine  even 
to  the  whole  nation !"  This  one  small  candle  lighting 
the  thousands  of  all  England,  is  not  quite  as  bold  a 
figure  of  enthusiasm  now  as  it  was  when  it  was  uttered, 
and  will  probably  be  somewhat  less  extravagant,  a 
hundred  years  hence,  than  now.  No!  they  cross  the 
sea  in  God's  name  only,  sent  by  Him,  as  they  believed, 
to  be  the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness — Pre 
pare  ye  the  way  of  the  Lord,  make  his  paths  straight. 
But  whither  those  straightened  paths  will  lead,  and  in 
what  shape  the  new  kingdom  of  the  Lord  will  come, 
they  as  little  conceive  as  John  the  Baptist  himself. 


140  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

Let  us  not  be  surprised,  then,  neither  let  it  be  any 
derogation  from  their  merit,  if  we  find  them  actually 
opposed,  not  seldom,  in  thought  or  speculative  view,  to 
opinions  and  institutions,  now  regarded  as  being  most 
distinctively  American.  In  this  I  partly  rejoice;  for 
some  of  the  distinctions  we  boast,  it  is  their  most  real 
praise,  not  to  have  sought  or  accepted.  Thus  we  boast 
that  we  have  made  solemn  proof  to  the  world  of  the 
great  principle,  that  civil  government  has  its  founda 
tion  in  a  social  compact — that  it  originates  only  in  the 
consent  of  the  governed — that  self-government  is  the 
inalienable  right  of  every  people — that  true  liberty  is 
the  exercise  and  secure  possession  of  this  prerogative — 
that  majorities  of  wills  have  an  inherent  right  to  deter 
mine  the  laws — and  that  government  by  divine  right  is 
only  a  solemn  imposture.  I  will  not  deny  that,  in 
some  very  partial  and  qualified  sense,  these  supposed 
doctrines  of  ours  may  be  true.  But  taken  in  the  more 
absolute  sense,  in  which  they  are  boasted  by  many, 
they  compose  a  heap  of  as  empty  and  worthless  chaff  as 
ever  fed  the  conceit  of  any  people  in  the  world. 

What  are  formal  compacts,  what  is  self-government, 
what  are  majorities  of  wills,  taken  as  foundations  of 
civil  order?  Or,  if  we  speak  of  right,  what  right  is 
there  of  any  kind,  which  is  not  divine  right?  Or, 
dropping  all  such  refinements,  what  truth  can  there  be 
in  abstract  principles  of  order,  discovered  by  us,  which 
make  every  other  government  that  has  existed  in  the 
world,  for  six  thousand  years,  an  imposture,  or  a  base 
less  usurpation  ? 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  141 

But  if  it  be  conceived  that  there  are  three  distinct  or 
ders  of  government,  adapted  to  three  distinct  stages  of 
social  advancement — the  government  of  force,  the  gov 
ernment  of  prescription,  and  the  government  of  choice 
— and  then  that  the  particular  terms  of  order  just 
named  are  most  appropriate  and  happiest  for  us,  taken 
as  modes  or  machinery  of  government,  and  not  as  theo 
retic  and  moral  foundations ;  if  we  say  these  will  best 
accommodate  our  liberties,  and  secure  us  in  the  high 
position  to  which  God  has  raised  us,  it  is  well.  But 
then  we  need  to  add  that  law  is  law,  binding  upon 
souls,  not  as  human  will,  or  the  will  of  just  one  more 
than  half  the  full  grown  men  over  a  certain  age,  but  a 
power  of  God  entering  into  souls  and  reigning  in  them 
as  a  divine  instinct  of  civil  order,  creating  thus  a  state — 
perpetual,  beneficent,  the  safeguard  of  the  homes  and 
of  industry,  the  condition  of  a  public  feeling  and  a  con 
sciously  organic  life.  This  it  is  that  makes  all  govern 
ment  sacred  and  powerful,  that  it  somehow  stands  in 
the  will  of  God ;  nay,  it  is  the  special  dignity  and  glory 
and  freedom  of  our  government,  thai  it  rests,  so  little, 
on  the  mere  will  or  force  of  man,  so  entirely  on  those 
principles  of  justice  and  common  beneficence  which  we 
know  are  sacred  to  God.  And  it  is  the  glory  also  of 
our  founders  and  first  fathers  that  they  prepared  us  to 
such  a  state.  Had  they  managed  to  weave  nothing 
into  our  character  more  adequate  than  we  sometimes 
discover  in  our  political  dogmas,  we  should  even  have 
wanted  the  institutions  about  which  we  speculate  so 
feebly,  and  should  have  been  as  hopeless  of  any  settled 


142  THE    FOUNDERS    Gil  EAT 

terms  of  order,  as  we  now  are  confident  of  our  baseless 
and  undigested  principles. 

I  can  not  withstand  the  temptation  to  recite,  just 
here,  another  passage  from  Eobinson.  I  do  it,  partly 
because  it  so  exactly  meets  the  genius  of  our  institu 
tions,  and  reveals  so  beautifully  the  moral  springs  of 
our  history,  and  partly  because  it  prepares  a  way  so 
aptly  for  other  suggestions  yet  to  be  offered.  He  gives 
the  Pilgrims,  on  their  departure,  a  written  letter  of  ad 
vice  to  be  carried  with  them,  in  which  are  contained 
the  following  remarkable  words — words  which  I  could 
even  wish  were  graven  in  tablets  of  stone,  as  the  words 
of  a  father  before  Washington,  and  set  up  over  the 
doors  of  our  Congress,  our  State  Legislatures,  our  town 
halls  and  political  assembly  rooms,  there  to  stand, 
meeting  the  eyes  of  our  people  as  long  as  the  nation 
exists — certain  always  of  this,  that  when  the  spirit  of 
the  words  is  wholly  gone,  the  nation  will  exist  no 
longer : 

"Lastly,  whereas  you  are  to  become  a  body  politic, 
using  civil  government  amongst  yourselves,  and  are  not 
furnished  with  any  persons  of  special  eminency  above 
the  rest  [no  knights  or  noble  orders]  to  be  chosen  into 
office  of  government,  let  your  wisdom  and  godliness 
appear,  not  only  by  choosing  such  persons  as  do  en 
tirely  love  and  will  diligently  promote  the  common 
good,  but  also  in  yielding  unto  them  all  due  honor  and 
obedience  in  their  lawful  administrations ;  not  behold 
ing  the  ordinariness  of  their  persons,  but  God's  ordi 
nance  for  your  good ;  nor  being  like  the  foolish  multi- 


IN    THE  IK     UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  143 

tude,  who  more  honor  the  gay  coat  [understand  the 
stars  and  ribbons  of  nobility]  than  either  the  virtuous 
mind  of  the  man,  or  the  glorious  ordinance  of  the  Lord. 
But  you  know  better  things,  and  that  the  image  of  the 
Lord's  power  and  authority,  which  the  magistrate  bear- 
eth,  is  honorable  in  how  mean  persons  soever.  And 
this  duty  you  may  the ,  more  willingly  and  conscionably 
perform,  because  you  are,  at  least  for  the  present,  to 
have  only  them  for  your  ordinary  governors,  which 
yourselves  shall  make  choice  of  for  that  work."* 

But,  while  our  founders  stand  right,  when  viewed  in 
relation  to  what  is  most  really  fundamental  in  our  insti 
tutions,  we  must  not  expect  them  to  concur  in  all  that 
we  now  regard  as  most  properly  and  distinctly  Amer 
ican. 

They  had  no  schemes  of  democracy  to  execute. 
They  were  not,  in  fact,  or  in  their  own  view,  republi 
cans  in  their  ideas  of  government.  "When  Eobinson's 
doctrine  of  church  order  was  assailed  as  being  a  scheme 
of  Christian  democracy,  he  repelled  the  imputation  as  a 
slander,  insisting,  instead,  that  it  was  a  plan  of  order 
'•plainly  aristocratical."t  They  were  all,  to  a  man, 
royalists  and  true  Englishmen — pleased  with  the  hope 
of  "endeavoring  the  advancement  of  his  Majesty's  do 
minion."^:  Some  of  them  delighted  in  being  able  to 
write  "J/r."  before  their  names,  and  the  others  would 
have  cast  out  any  man  as  a  leveler  and  disorderly  per 
son,  who  dared  to  controvert  the  validity  of  that  high 

*  Young's  Chronicles,  p.  95.    f  Punchard,  p.  348.     %  Cotton  Mather,  p.  G. 


144  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

distinction.  Does  any  one  the  less  certainly  know  that 
their  whole  scheme  of  principle  and  order  was  virtually 
and  essentially  republican,  even  from  the  first? 

They  as  little  thought  of  raising  a  separation  of 
church  and  state  as  of  planting  a  new  democracy. 
They  accepted  in  full  and  by  formal  reference  the  En 
glish  doctrine  on  this  subject,  and  Eobinson  even  pro 
fessed  his  willingness  to  accept  the  "oath  of  suprem 
acy,"  which  acknowledges  the  king  as  the  rightful  head 
of  the  church.  When  a  new  settlement  or  town  was 
planted,  they  said,  not  that  the  settlers  were  become  a 
body  politic,  but  that  they  were  "  inchurched."  And 
when  Davenport  preached  on  the  terms  of  suffrage,  the 
problem  stated  was,  "how  to  order  a  frame  of  civil 
government  in  a  plantation  whose  design  is  relig 
ion."* 

And  yet  we  can  look  back  now  and  see  as  distinctly 
as  possible,  that  their  very  doctrine  of  church-member 
ship  must  necessitate  a  final  separation  of  church  and 
state.  For,  if  none  but  the  true  members  of  Christ  can 
be  included  in  the  church,  and  none  but  such  as  are  in 
cluded  can  have  the  right  of  suffrage,  then  it  must 
shortly  appear  that  many  good  neighbors  and  virtuous 
sons  and  brothers  are  reduced  to  the  condition  of  aliens 
in  the  commonwealth.  Accordingly,  we  find  that  the 
settlers  of  the  Hartford  Colony,  who  had  begun  to  see 
the  pernicious  consequences  of  the  restricted  suffrage  in 
Massachusetts,  in  the  beautiful  constitution  they  adopt 
ed — the  first  written  constitution  of  a  purely  represent- 

*  Bacon,  p.  289. 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  145 

ative  republican  government  known  to  human  history — 
opened  the  right  of  suffrage  to  all  whom  the  several 
towns  might  elect  as  freemen.  And  thus,  in  less  than 
twenty  years  after  the  settlement  of  Plymouth,  the  sep 
aration  of  church  and  state  is  visibly  begun — a  step  is 
taken  which  can  possibly  issue  in  this  alone,  though  the 
result  is  not  completely  and  formally  reached,  till  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years  have  passed  away. 

I  wish  it  were  possible  to  claim  for  our  fathers  the 
honor  of  a  free  toleration  of  religious  opinions.  This  it 
would  seem  that  they  might  have  learned  from  their 
own  wrongs  and  sufferings.  But  they  were  not  the 
men  to  think  of  finding  their  doctrines  in  any  woes  of 
their  flesh.  They  had,  in  fact,  a  conscience  against  tol 
eration,  lest  the  state,  "whose  end  is  religion,"  should 
seem  to  connive  at  false  doctrines  and  schismatic  prac 
tices.  Therefore,  when  Cromwell  was  proposing  toler 
ation  in  England,  the  Synod  of  Massachusetts  even  pro 
tested  against  the  measure  as  licentious.  And  one  of 
their  ministers,  the  eccentric  pastor  of  Ipswich,  was 
stirred  up  to  publish,  in  England,  a  most  violent  dia 
tribe  against  it.  He  delighted  in  the  old  maxim  that 
"true  religion  is  ignis  probationis" — a  test  of  fire.  In 
deed  this  narrow-spirited  man  had  lived  in  the  midst  of, 
toleration,  upon  the  continent,  and  had  not  discovered 
its  Christian  beauty.  "I  lived,"  he  says,  "in  a  city 
where  a  Papist  preached  in  one  church,  a  Lutheran  in 
another,  a  Calvinist  in  a  third ;  a  Lutheran  one  part  of 
the  day,  and  a  Calvinist  the  other,  in  the  same  pulpit. 
The  religion  of  that  place  was  but  motley  and  meagre, 


146  THE    FOUNDERS    GEE  AT 

and  their  affections  leopard-like."*  Alas !  for  the  brave 
pastor  of  Ipswich,  how  clear  is  it  now,  that  the  tolera 
tion  he  so  much  dreaded  really  belonged  to  all  but  the 
rather  testy  prejudices  that  he  took  for  a  part  of  his  re 
ligion.  The  old  ignis  probationis,  too,  whose  smoke 
had  so  lately  been  wafted  over  England  from  Smith- 
field  and  Tyburn — which,  however,  he  did  not  mean,  I 
trust,  to  commend'  in  its  most  literal  and  orthodox 
sense — is  gone  out  forever  the  world  over.  And  as  to 
the  "leopard-like"  religion,  just  that  which  compelled 
a  separation  of  Church  and  State,  has  doubtless  com 
pelled  a  sufferance  also  of  this,  even  in  his  own  paro 
chial  Ipswich  itself.  Or  if  free  opinion  be  a  leopard, 
spotting  over  the  Church,  or  dissolving  it  into  so  many 
motley  groups  of  division,  it  will  ere  long  be  seen  that 
this  unruly  leopard  is  fulfilling  the  prophecy,  forgetting 
his  instincts  of  prey  and  schism,  and  lying  down  with 
the  kids  of  love,  in  a  catholic  and  perennial  unity. 

It  need  scarcely  be  added,  that  our  fathers  had  as 
little  thought  of  a  separation  from  the  mother  country 
and  as  little  desire  of  founding  an  independent  com 
monwealth,  as  of  the  other  distinctions  just  named. 
England  was  their  home,  they  loved  the  monarchy. 
.They  would  even  have  doubted  their  piety  itself,  had 
they  found  a  single  unloyal  thought  in  their  bosoms. 
And  yet  they  were  compelled  to  be  jealous,  even  from 
the  first,  of  any  too  close  implication  with  the  political 
affairs  of  the  mother  country,  lest  it  should  finally  in 
volve  the  security  of  their  liberties.  They  formally 

*  Cobbler  of  Agawam,  p.  5. 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  147 

declined,  in  this  view,  to  connect  themselves  with 
Cromwell's  Parliament  by  any  application  to  it,  and 
also  to  appear  by  deputies  in  the  Westminster  Assem 
bly  of  Divines.*  It  may  be  taken  also  as  a  singular 
and  most  ominous  fact,  that  the  Hartford  Colony  in  ar 
ranging  the  new  constitution  just  alluded  to,  made  no 
mention  either  of  king  or  parliament.  This  constitu 
tion  required  an  oath  of  allegiance  directly  to  itself,  and 
even  asserted  a  supreme  power — "In  which  General 
Court  shall  consist  the  supreme  power  of  the  Common 
wealth.  vf  And  this  supreme  power  they,  in  fact,  ex 
ercised  forever  after;  subject  to  no  negative,  under 
governors  of  their  own  choice,  creating  their  own  tribu 
nals  and  holding  them  without  appeal,  and  even  openly 
resisting  the  royal  levies  as  an  infringement  of  their 
rights.  Here  was,  in  fact,  a  little,  independent,  uncon 
scious  republic,  unfolding  itself  by  the  banks  of  the 
Connecticut,  on  its  own  basis,  under  its  own  laws ;  so 
that  when  the  war  of  independence  came,  instead  of 
being  dissolved  by  the  state  of  revolution  and  required 
to  reorganize  itself,  it  stood  ready  in  full  form  for  ac 
tion,  and  was  able,  in  the  first  twenty-four  hours  after 
the  outbreak,  to  set  twenty  thousand  men  upon  the 
march,  fully  appointed  with  officers  and  arms.  The 
people  had  never  set  up  for  independence.  They  were 
loyal — in  their  way.  But  they  had  been  sheltered  un 
der  the  very  singular  privileges  of  their  charter,  as  well 
as  by  their  more  retired  position ;  and  had  actually 
grown  apart,  unconsciously  and  by  force  of  their  own 

*  Bancroft,  vol.  5,  pp.  450-1.  f  Trumbnll,  i,  p.  532. 


148  THE     FOUNDERS    GREAT 

moral  affinities,  into  a  free  republic.  The  condition  of 
Khode  Island  was  similar ;  and  the  same  general  pro 
cess  was  going  on  also  in  the  other  colonies,  only  under 
many  restraints  from  royal  governors  and  the  qualified 
privileges  of  their  charters. 

Now  there  is  a  class  of  writers  and  critics  in  our 
country,  who  imagine  it  is  quite  clear  that  our  fathers 
can  not  have  been  the  proper  founders  of  our  American 
liberties,  because  it  is  in  proof  that  they  were  so  intol 
erant  and  so  clearly  unrepublican  often  in  their  avowed 
sentiments.  They  suppose  the  world  to  be  a  kind  of 
professor's  chair,  and  expect  events  to  transpire  logi 
cally  in  it.  They  see  not  that  casual  opinions,  or  con 
ventional  and  traditional  prejudices  are  one  thing,  and 
that  principles  and  morally  dynamic  forces  are  often 
quite  another ;  that  the  former  are  the  connectives  only 
of  history,  the  latter  its  springs  of  life ;  and  that  if  the 
former  serve  well  enough,  as  providential  guards  and 
moderating  weights,  overlying  the  deep  geologic  fires 
and  subterranean  heavings  of  the  new  moral  instincts 
below,  these  latter  will  assuredly  burst  up,  at  last,  in 
strong  mountains  of  rock,  to  crest  the  world.  Unable 
to  conceive  such  a  truth,  they  cast  about  them,  accord 
ingly,  to  find  the  paternity  of  our  American  institutions 
in  purely  accidental  causes.  We  are  clear  of  aristo 
cratic  orders,  they  say,  because  there  was  no  blood  of 
which  to  make  an  aristocracy;  independent  of  king 
and  parliament,  because  we  grew  into  independence 
under  the  natural  effects  of  distance  and  the  exercise  of 


IX    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  149 

a  legislative  power;  republican,  because  our  constitu 
tions  were  cast  in  the  moulds  of  British  law ;  a  wonder 
of  growth  in  riches,  enterprise,  and  population,  because 
of  the  hard  necessities  laid  upon  us,  and  our  simple 
modes  of  life. 

And  the  concurrent  action  of  these  causes  must  not 
be  denied ;  we  only  must  not  take  them  as  the  true  ac 
count  of  our  successes.  As  good  accidents  were  en 
joyed  elsewhere  as  here.  There  is  the  little  decayed 
town  of  St.  Augustine,  settled  by  a  Spanish  colony 
even  earlier,  by  some  years,  than  Boston,  which,  never 
theless,  we  were  just  now  called  to  rescue,  by  a  mili 
tary  force,  from  the  incursions  of  the  savages !  There 
are  Mexico  and  the  South  American  states,  colonized 
by  Spain,  even  a  hundred  years  prior  to  the  settlement 
of  Plymouth, — when  Spain,  too,  was  at  the  height  of  her 
glory,  and  even  far  in  advance  of  England,  as  regards 
the  state  of  wealth  and  civil  order, — fellow-republics 
indeed  in  name,  but  ignorant  still  of  what  liberty  is, 
thirty  years  after  they  have  gotten  the  right  to  it; 
poor,  unprogressive,  demoralized  by  superstition,  and 
the  oldest  and.  strongest  of  them  all  actually  contend 
ing,  at  this  moment,  with  the  aborigines,  to  save  large 
towns  and  old  and  populous  settlements  from  exterm 
ination  !  A  glance  in  this  direction  is  enough  to  show 
how  much  must  be  referred  to  the  personal  qualities 
and  principles  of  the  founders  of  a  nation,  how  little  to 
the  mere  accidents  of  circumstance  and  condition. 

Besides,  there  is  yet  another  view  of  this  question, 


150  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

that  has  a  far  higher  significance.  We  do  not  under 
stand,  as  it  seems  to  me,  the  real  greatness  of  our  insti 
tutions,  when  we  look  simply  at  the  forms  under  which 
we  hold  our  liberties.  It  consists  not  in  these,  but  in 
the  magnificent  Possibilities  that  underlie  these  forms, 
as  their  fundamental  supports  and  conditions.  In  these 
we  have  the  true  paternity  and  spring  of  our  institu 
tions,  and  these,  beyond  a  question,  are  the  gift  of  our 
founders. 

We  see  this,  first  of  all,  in  the  fixed  relation  between 
freedom  and  intelligence,  and  the  remarkable  care  they 
had  of  popular  education.  It  was  not  their  plan  to 
raise  up  a  body  of  republicans.  But  they  believed  in 
mind  as  in  God.  Their  religion  was  the  choice  of 
mind.  The  gospel  they  preached  must  have  minds  to 
hear  it;  and  hence  the  solemn  care  they  had,  even 
from  the  first  day  of  their  settlement,  of  the  education 
of  every  child.  And,  as  God  would  have  it,  the  chil 
dren  whom  they  trained  up  for  pillars  in  the  church, 
turned  out  also  to  be  more  than  tools  of  power.  They 
grew  up  into  magistrates,  leaders  of  the  people,  debat 
ers  of  right  and  of  law,  statesmen,  generals,  and  signers 
of  declarations  for  liberty.  Such  a  mass  of  capacity 
had  never  been  seen  before,  in  so  small  a  body  of  men. 
And  this  is  the  first  condition  of  liberty— the  Condens 
ation  of  Power.  For  liberty  is  not  the  license  of  an 
hour;  it  is  not  the  butchery  of  a  royal  house,  or  the 
passion  that  rages  behind  a  barricade,  or  the  caps  that 
are  swung  or  the  vivas  shouted  at  the  installing  of  a 
liberator.  But  it  is  the  compact,  impenetrable  matter 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  151 

of  much  manhood,  the  compressed  energy  of  good 
sense  and  public  reason,  having  power  to  see  before 
and  after,  and  measure  action  by  counsel — this  it  is 
that  walls  about  the  strength  and  liberty  of  a  people. 
To  be  free  is  not  to  fly  abroad,  as  the  owls  of  the  night, 
when  they  take  the  freedom  of  the  air,  but  it  is  to  set 
tle  and  build  and  be  strong — a  commonwealth  as  much 
better  compacted  in  the  terms  of  reason,  as  it  casts  off 
more  of  the  restraints  of  force. 

Mutual  confidence  also  is  another  and  fundamental 
condition  of  free  institutions.  When  a  revolution 
breaks  out  in  Mexico  or  in  Paris,  and  the  old  magis 
tracies  are  swept  away,  then  immediately  you  shall  see 
that  a  most  painful  question  arises.  Power  must  be 
deposited  somewhere ;  with  whom  can  it  safely  be  trust 
ed  ?  Is  it  already  in  the  hands  of  a  committee  ?  then 
can  this  committee  be  trusted?  Is  a  military  com 
mander  set  up  to  maintain  order  for  a  time  with  greater 
efficiency  ?  what  shall  restrain  the  commander  ?  Who 
ever  is  in  power,  the  signs  are  jealously  watched  and 
morbidly  construed.  Well  is  it  if  some  faction  does 
not  spring  up  to  usurp  the  sovereign  power,  by  a  new 
act  of  revolution,  justified  by  the  pretext  of  saving  the 
public  liberties.  Here  you  have  the  whole  history  of 
Mexico  for  the  last  thirty  years,  and,  with  fewer  and 
less  frequent  alternations,  the  history  of  France,  for  a 
longer  period.  There  is  a  fatal  want  of  mutual  confi 
dence  which  nothing  can  supply,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  there  is  nothing  in  which  to  confide.  Power  is 


152  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

known  only  as  power,  not  as  the  endowment  of  obliga 
tion. 

We  are  distracted  by  no  such  infirmity.  We  have 
never  a  thought  of  danger  in.  the  immense  powers  we 
confide  to  our  rulers,  simply  because  we  can  trust  one 
another.  We  know  so  well  the  good  sense  and  the 
firm  conscience  of  our  people  as  to  be  sure  that,  if  any 
magistrate  lifts  the  flag  of  an  usurper  and  throws  off 
the  terms  of  his  trust,  all  power  will  instantly  drop  out 
of  his  hands,  and  nothing  will  be  necessary  but  to  send 
a  constable  after  him,  even  though  he  be  the  head  of 
the  army  itself! 

Now  this  matter  of  mutual  confidence,  fundamental 
as  you  see  it  to  be  to  all  strength  in  our  institutions,  or 
peace  under  them,  has  a  very  humble,  unpretending 
look.  Scarcely  ever  has  it  crept  into  the  notice  of  his 
tory.  It  has  never  been  celebrated,  I  am  sure,  in  any 
epic  poem.  No !  but  it  is  the  silent  exploit  of  a  great 
history.  Let  Mexico  ask  for  it,  and  offer  the  mortgage 
of  her  mines  to  buy  it ;  let  France  question  her  savans, 
or  lay  it  on  the  mitred  priesthood  at  her  altars  to  pro 
vide  the  new  republic  with  this  most  indispensable  gift, 
and  alas !  they  can  not  all  together  guess  where  it  is,  or 
whence  it  shall  come.  It  is  the  silent  growth  of  centu- 
turies,  and  there  is  no  seed  but  the  seed  of  Puritan  dis 
cipline,  out  of  which  it  was  ever  known  to  grow. 

It  is  another  and  most  necessary  condition  of  free  in 
stitutions,  that  the  people  should  be  trained  to  a  special 
exercise  of  personal  self-government.  For  it  is  the  dis- 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS..  153 

tinction  of  a  republic  that  it  governs  less,  and  less  vio 
lently,  substituting  a  moral  in  place  of  a  public  con 
trol.  It  is  an  approach,  towards  no  government, 
grounded,  as  a  possibility,  in  the  fact  of  a  more  com 
plete  government  established  in  the  personal  habits  of 
the  subjects  themselves.  No  republic  could  stand  for  a 
year,  if  it  were  compelled  to  govern  as  much,  and  with 
as  much  force  as  the  English  people  are  governed. 
Force  must  be  nearly  dispensed  with.  For, 


What  are  numbers  knit 


By  force  or  custom?    Man  who  man  would  be, 
Must  rule  the  empire  of  himself;  in  it 
Must  be  supreme,  establishing  his  throne 
Of  vanquished  will,  quelling  the  anarchy 
Of  hopes  and  fears,  being  himself  alone." 

Under  this  high  possibility  or  condition,  punish 
ments  are  mitigated,  the  laws  are  fewer  and  more  sim 
ple,  the  police  are  at  their  own  private  employments 
and  come  only  when  they  are  sent  for,  domestic  fortres 
ses  and  standing  armies  nowhere  appear  to  annoy  the 
sense  of  liberty.  A  foreigner  passing  through  the  re 
public  and  hearing  the  sound  of  government  in  no  beat 
of  the  drum,  seeing  the  government  in  no  parade  of 
horse  or  foot,  or  badges  of  police,  concludes  that  the 
people  are  put  upon  their  good  behavior  to-day ;  but 
when  he  is  told  that  they  were  so  yesterday,  and  will 
be  to-morrow,  he  imagines  that  a  doom  of  anarchy  is 
certainly  close  at  hand.  The  fears  of  Washington  and 
the  most  sober  patriots  of  his  time,  that  our  govern 
ment  had  not  strength  enough  to  stand,  were  justified 
by  all  human  example,  and  Were  not  to  be  blamed. 


154  THE    FOUNDERS    GKEAT 

And  yet  the  course  of  our  legislation  has,  to  this  hour, 
been  a  course  of  discontinuance.  We  seem  to  be  mak 
ing  an  experiment,  with  how  many  laws  it  is  possible 
to  dispense.  We  are  anxious  many  times  for  the  re 
sult,  and  yet  we  do  not  suffer.  We  have  gone  a  length 
in  this  direction  which  to  any  European  will  appear  in 
credible.  When  I  ponder,  not  without  fears  I  confess, 
this  sublime  distinction  of  our  country,  holding  in  con 
trast  what  has  been  heretofore,  and  forecasting  what 
God  may  be  intending  to  bring  forth  here  in  the  future 
ages,  I  am  swallowed  up  in  admiration  of  that  power 
by  which  our  faithful  fathers  were  able  to  set  our  his 
tory  on  a  footing  so  peculiar.  They  gave  up  their  all 
to  religion,  knew  no  wisdom  but  simply  to  live  for  re 
ligion,  and  were  it  not  for  the  intermixture  of  so  many 
foreign  elements  which  at  present  disturb  our  condition, 
we  might  almost  imagine  that  in  some  good  future, 
when  the  moral  regimen  of  self-government  is  complete 
in  our  people,  the  external  government  of  force  and 
constraint  may  be  safely  dispensed  with,  the  civil  state 
subside  in  the  fullness  of  the  spiritual,  and  God  alone 
be  left  presiding  over  the  grand  republic  of  wills  by  the 
sufficiency  of  his  own  divine  Spirit  and  principles. 

Closely  allied  with  this  great  possibility  of  self-gov 
ernment,  as  a  ground  of  republican  order,  is  another,  if 
indeed  it  be  another,  which  must  needs  be  prepared 
also.  I  speak  of  the  displacement  of  loyalty,  and  the 
substitution  of  law.  Loyalty  is  a  sentiment,  law  a  con 
viction  or  principle.  One  is  the  tribute  yielded  to  a 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  155 

person,  the  other  is  the  enthronement  of  an  abstraction 
simply,  or  a  formal  statute.  In  the  sentiment  of  loy 
alty,  taken  as  a  tribute  of  homage  to  high-born  persons, 
to  the  starred  noble,  or  the  reigning  prince  of  a  royal 
house,  there  is  a  certain  beauty  which  naturally  fasci 
nates  the  mind.  The  sentiment  partakes  of  chivalry. 
In  such  a  distribution  of  the  social  state,  there  is  a  fine 
show  of  distinctions  that  sets  off  a  romance,  or  a  play, 
and  even  gives  to  society  itself  the  courtly  air  of  a 
drama.  Government  is  here  seen  in  the  concrete,  set 
off  by  dress  and  title  and  scales  of  precedence,  and  the 
loyal  heart  rejoices  in  the  homage  it  yields  to  the  gods 
of  the  eye.  Such  a  government  is  better  adapted  to  a 
people  generally  rude  and  uneducated,  or  low  in  moral 
culture,  because  it  is  a  government  of  show  and  senti 
ment,  and  not  of  reason.  But,  with  all  the  captivating 
airs  it  has  to  the  mere  looker-on,  it  is,  in  fact,  a  govern 
ment  of  authorized  caprice,  and  obedience  a  state,  too 
often,  of  disappointed  fealty.  If  it  is  pleasant  to  look 
upon  the  fine  livery  of  a  noble,  it  is  far  less  so  to  be 
imprisoned  as  a  public  malefactor  for  a  slight  breach  of 
the  game  law.  The  splendor  of  nobility  is  too  often 
corruption ;  the  protection,  contempt  and  insult.  More 
over,  it  will  be  found  that  a  merely  personal  and  senti 
mental  homage  is  of  a  nature  too  inconstant  or  ca 
pricious  ever  to  be  confidently  trusted.  It  may  pos 
sibly  hold  a  dog  to  his  fidelity,  but  it  never  held  a  race 
of  men.  There,  accordingly,  has  never  been  a  govern 
ment,  standing  on  the  basis  of  loyalty,  that  was  not 
obliged  to  fortify  loyalty  by  a  display  of  steel  and 


156  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

of  military  squadrons,  more  conspicuous  than  its  noble 
orders. 

Now  the  problem  is,  in  founding  a  republic,  to  pre 
pare  a  social  state  without  artificial  distinctions,  and 
govern  it  by  abstractions  and  formal  constitutions  in 
place  of  persons.  The  "gay  coat"  of  Robinson,  the 
royal  pageants  and  the  starred  nobility  are  withdrawn 
from  the  eye,  and  the  laws  and  constitutions — in  one 
view  nothing  but  invisible  abstractions  or  terms  of  pub 
lic  reason — must  be  set  in  that  inward  homage  which 
can  never  be  shaken.  The  problem,  though  it  be  the 
most  difficult  ever  attempted  in  the  history  of  mankind, 
is  yet,  for  once,  accomplished.  Consider  the  terrible 
surging  of  party  and  passion,  displa}^ed  in  one  of  our 
Presidential  elections.  See  a  whole  nation,  vast  enough 
for  an  empire,  roused  to  the  intensest  pitch  of  strife  and 
tearing,  as  it  were  in  the  coming  out  of  a  demon.  The 
old  Guelph  and  Ghibelline  factions  were  scarcely  more 
violent  or  implacable.  But  the  day  of  election  passes 
without  so  much  as  the  report  of  an  outbreak,  and  the 
day  after  the  whole  nation  is  as  quiet  as  if  there  were 
but  one  mind  in  it — all  by  the  power  of  Invisible  Law ! 
Nay,  we  had  a  President  at  the  head  of  our  great  repub 
lic  who  had  no  party  in  the  Congress,  and  few  friends 
among  the  people.  During  four  whole  years  he  occu 
pied  the  seat  of  power,  dispensing  a  patronage  greater 
than  that  of  the  Queen  of  England,  with  not  a  soldier 
visible  to  assert  the  majesty  of  order,  and  yet  without 
even  the  symptom  of  a  disturbance.  Never,  in  all  the 
history  o£  mankind,  was  displayed  a  spectacle  of  moral 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  157 

sublimity  comparable  to  these  four  years  of  American 
history — sublimity  the  more  sublime,  because  we  were 
wholly  unconscious  of  it  ourselves,  and  had  not  even  a 
thought  that  it  could  be  otherwise ! 

And  the  fundamental  cause,  if  you  seek  it,  is  that 
law  with  us  is  the  public  right  and  reason.  It  is  mine, 
it  is  yours,  and  being  for  all  as  public  reason,  it  is 
God's.  To  rebel  against  it,  therefore,  is  to  rebel  both 
against  ourselves  and  God.  And  if  you  ask  whence 
came  this  conviction,  how  was  it  so  firmly  established  ? 
By  the  spirit,  I  answer,  and  the  religion  of  our  fathers. 
Whether  true  or  false  is  not  now  the  question — it  had, 
at  least,  that  kind  of  merit  that  belongs  to  a  religion 
made  up  mostly  of  judgments  and  abstractions.  For 
these  hard,  heavy  ingots  of  truth  they  renounced  com 
fort,  country,  property,  and  home.  These  they  preach 
ed.  On  these  they  even  fed  their  children.  Honors 
and  pageants  of  distinction  were  out  of  sight.  No  man 
thought  to  be  saved  in  the  easy  drill  of  forms.  No  mi 
tred  order,  no  priesthood,  came  between  the  worshiper 
and  his  God  to  act  the  patron  for  him,  and  be  the  con 
duit  of  heaven's  grace  to  his  soul.  He  must  enter  with 
boldness  into  the  holiest  himself.  There  was  besides  in 
Calvinism,  as  a  religion,  just  that  which  would  give  ab 
stractions  the  intensest  power  and  the  most  awful  reality 
to  the  mind.  It  took  its  beginning  at  the  sovereignty 
of  God.  It  saw  all  men  lying  in  a  common  plane  of 
equality  below.  The  only  princes  it  knew  were  God's 
elect.  And  this  kind  of  knighthood  it  was  no  easy 
formality  to  gain.  It  was  to  believe  and  accurately 

14 


158  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

hold  and  experimentally  know  the  iron  base-work  of 
an  abstractive  theology.  The  mind  was  thrust  into 
questions  that  compelled  action — eternal  decrees,  abso 
lute  election,  arbitrary  grace,  imputed  sin,  imputed 
righteousness.  On  these  hard  anvils  of  abstraction  the 
blows  of  thought  must  needs  be  ever  ringing,  and  when 
the  points  were  said  to  be  cordially  received,  it  was 
meant  also  that  they  were  dialectically  bedded  in  the 
framework  of  the  man. 

Hence  the  remarkable  power  of  abstractions  in  the 
American  mind.  The  Germans  can  live  in  them  as 
their  day-dreams,  but  we  can  live  upon  them  and  by 
them  as  our  daily  bread.  Our  enthusiasm  is  most  en 
thusiastic,  our  practical  energy  most  energetic  and 
practical  just  here — in  what  we  do,  or  hope  to  do,  un 
der  the  application  of  great  principles,  whether  of  sci 
ence,  government,  or  religion.  And  thus  it  has  come 
to  pass  that  the  gulf  between  loyalty  and  law  is  effectu 
ally  crossed  over.  The  transition  is  made,  and  we  are 
set  by  it  on  a  new  and,  as  time  will  show,  a  much  high 
er  plane  of  history.  In  one  view,  there  is  something 
ungracious  in  our  American  spirit.  We  are  nearly  as 
ignorant  of  the  loyal  feeling  as  a  tribe  of  wild  animals 
— unrespectful  often  to  worth  and  true  precedence. 
And  yet  we  have  a  feeling  as  truly  national  as  any 
people  in  the  world.  If  the  traveler  in  England  begins 
to  count  the  pictured  Oaks  and  Lions,  the  royal  or 
princely  names  stuck  upon  all  shows  and  shops  of  trade 
and  chop-houses  and  even  petty  wares,  down  to  soaps 
and  razors — riding  always  on  "Royal"  roads,  sleeping  at 


IN    THEIK    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  159 

"Koyal"  inns,  and  washing 'in  the  water  of  some 
"Koyal"  aqueduct — if  he  is  nauseated,  for  the  time, 
by  what  appears  to  be  the  inexhaustible  servility  of 
that  great  people,  he  13  sure  to  smile  at  his  own  impa 
tience  when  he  returns,  and  recall  the  sentence  he  had 
passed.  He  takes  up  the  newspapers  at  his  hotel,  and 
finds  how  many  headed  by  cognomens  ingeniously 
compounded  with  "People,"  "Democracy,"  "Kepub- 
lic,"  "Constitution,"  "Independence,"  and  "Nation." 
He  runs  his  eye  down  the  advertising  columns  and 
along  the  signboards  of  the  street,  and  it  falls  on  how 
many  titles  to  patriotic  favor,  ranging  in  all  grades, 
from  the  "  People's  Line  "  of  steamboats  and  the  ship 
"Constitution,"  down  to  the  "Jefferson  Lunch"  and 
the  "  New  Democratic  Liniment."  In  one  view,  these 
demonstrations  have  a  most  ludicrous  air ;  in  another, 
they  are  signs  of  the  deepest  significance — showing  that 
we,  as  truly  as  the  most  loyal  of  nations,  have  our  pub 
lic  feeling ;  a  feeling  not  the  less  universal  and  decided, 
because  its  objects  are  mostly  impersonal. 

And,  by  force  of  this  public  feeling,  it  is  just  now  be 
ginning  to  appear  that  the  government  of  this  vast  and, 
as  most  persons  would  say,  loosely  compacted  republic, 
is  really  the  strongest  government  in  the  world.  What 
can  be  stronger  than  a  government  that  has  no  enemies, 
and  the  subjects  of  which  do  not  desire  and  would  not 
suffer  a  change?  They  have  looked  out  from  their 
fastnesses  and  the  loop-holes  of  fortified  order  in  Eu 
rope,  prophesying  our  speedy  lapse  into  anarchy ;  they 
have  said,  how  can  a  people  be  governed  without  a 


160  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

personal  embodiment  of  authority  in  princes  and  noble 
orders?  but  now,  when  their  thrones  are  rocking  on 
the  underswell  of  popular  movement,  and  their  princes 
flying  in  fishermen's  disguises  from  the  splendid  milli 
nery  that  was  to  captivate  the  loyal  eyes  of  their  peo 
ple,  they  begin  to  cast  a  look  across  the  ocean,  to  the 
new  republic,  whose  impalpable  throne  of  law  is  every 
where  acknowledged  by  all  as  a  friendly  power — and  is 
not  this,  they  ask,  the  real  strength  and  stability  of  or 
der? 

Yes,  and  so  I  trust  in  God  it  shall  prove  itself  to  the 
coming  ages.  When  twenty  years  hence,  and  twenty 
years  after  that,  the  successive  waves  of  liberty  roll 
high  across  the  fields  of  Europe,  and  the  old  prescrip 
tive  orders  and  powers  are  drifted  onward  and  away, 
till  not  even  the  wreck  can  be  found,  this  better  throne 
of  law  I  trust  shall  stand,  as  the  guardian  to  us  and  the 
promise  to  mankind  of  the  freedom  and  the  righteous 
peace  they  long  for. 

Do  I  then  affirm  that  our  fathers  foresaw  these  mag 
nificent  results,  now  revealed  in  our  political  history  ? 
I  have  even  made  it  a  part  of  their  greatness  that  they 
did  not.  They  stood  for  God  and  religion  alone. 
They  asked  for  nothing,  planned  for  nothing,  hoped 
for  nothing,  save  what  should  come  of  their  religion. 
They  believed  in  the  Bible  and  in  God's  decrees,  and 
they  came  over  to  profess  the  one  and  fulfill  the  other. 
They  had  not  so  much  as  thought  of  giving  the  uni 
verse  or  the  world  a  "  Revised  Constitution."  They 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  161 

did  not  believe  in  predestination  by  man — therefore 
had  nothing  in  common  with  our  modern  prophets  of 
"  science,"  who  promise  to  reorganize  society  from  a 
point  without  and  by  a  scheme  imposed,  not  by  any 
remedial  forces  of  faith  and  duty,  acting  from  within 
and  through  its  secret  laws.  They  did  not  begin  at  the 
point  zero  in  themselves,  or  in  their  own  human  wis 
dom,  but  at  duty;  and  they  represent,  at  once,  the 
infallible  success  and  the  majestic  firmness  of  duty. 
Compared  with  the  class  of  ephemeral  world-renovators 
just  named,  they  stand  as  the  firm,  granitic,  heaven- 
piercing  Needles,  by  the  mer  de  glace  of  human  unbe 
liefs  and  the  unwisdoms  of  pretended  science ;  and  while 
that  is  cracking  below  in  the  frosts  by  which  it  is  crys 
tallized,  and  grinding  clown  its  bed  of  destiny,  to  be 
melted  in  the  heat  of  practical  life  and  be  seen  no  more, 
they  rise  serenely,  as  ever,  lifting  their  heads  above  the 
storrn-clouds  of  the  world,  and  stand — still  looking  up ! 
They  will  do  below  only  what  they  seek  above.  They 
will  give  us  only  the  reward  of  their  lives,  and  what 
may  be  distilled  from  their  prayers.  And  in  these, 
they  give  us  all. 

Ah !  the  sour,  impracticable  race,  who,  by  reason  of 
their  sinister  conscience,  could  not  kneel  at  the  sacra 
ments,  and  must  needs  stand  up  before  God  Himself, 
when  kings  and  bishops  kneeled ;  barbarians  of  schism, 
who  revolted  to  be  rid  of  the  Christian  civility  of  priest 
ly  garments;  who  could  not  be  in  the  spirit  on  the 
Lord's  day  under  the  excellent  prayers  of  the  Parlia 
ment,  and  preferred  to  insult  the  king  by  dying,  rather 

14* 


162  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

than  to  yield  him  an  inch  of  Church  reformation ! — so 
they  are  described,  and  I  am  not  about  to  deny  that 
they  made  as  many  sharp  points  in  their  religion  as 
Christian  charity  and  true  reason  required.  When 
God  prepares  a  hammer,  it  will  not  be  made  of  silk. 
If  our  fathers  were  uncomfortable  men,  what  great 
character  ever  lived  that  was  not  an  uncomfortable 
man  to  his  times  ?  If  they  cast  off  the  decrees  of  Par 
liament,  and  took  in  the  decrees  of  God  in  their  place, 
was  it  not  to  be  expected,  both  from  what  they  had  cast 
off  and  from  what  they  had  taken,  that  there  would  be 
a  little  more  of  stiffness  and  punctilious  rigor  in  the  is 
sue  than  was  requisite  ?  Or,  if  they  had  found  a  true 
Pope  in  the  Bible,  what  should  follow,  but  a  most  lit 
eral  obeisance,  even  to  the  slipper  of  the  book?  As 
the  world,  too,  of  past  ages  had  received  their  salvation, 
with  tremulous  awe,  in  a  little  sprinkling  of  holy  water, 
or  a  wafer  on  the  tongue,  and  they  had  now  learned  to 
look  for  salvation  in  what  they  believed,  what  should 
-they  do  but  stand  for  their  mere  letters  of  abstraction, 
as  exact  and  scrupulous,  as  if  the  words  of  faith  had 
even  as  great  dignity,  as  ablutions  of  the  finger  or  a 
paste  in  the  mouth  ?  It  could  not  be  otherwise.  That 
was  no  age  for  easy  compliances  and  flowing  lines  of 
opinion.  Whatever  was  done,  must  have  the  cutting 
edge  of  scruple  and  over-punctual  severity.  Only  let 
our  fathers  be  judged  with 'that  true  historic  sympathy, 
which  is  the  due  of  all  men,  and  I  ask  no  more.  Then 
it  will  even  be  confessed  that,  by  the  strictness  which  ex 
ceeded  reason,  they  only  proved  that  close  fidelity  and 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS.  163 

sacred  homage  to  reason,  which  is  itself  but  a  name  for 
true  spiritual  honor  and  greatness. 

I  have  spoken  thus  at  length  of  the  successes  of  our 
political  and  social  history,  for  it  is  chiefly  in  these  that 
we  have  our  prominence  before  the  world,  and  seem 
also  to  ourselves  to  have  achieved  results  of  the  greatest 
brilliancy  and  magnitude.  But  my  subject  requires  me 
to  believe,  and  I  think  the  signs  also  indicate  that  re 
sults  are  yet  to  come,  far  transcending  these  in  their 
sublimity  and  their  beneficent  consequences  to  man 
kind.  Indeed,  what  now  we  call  results  of  history, 
seem  to  me  to  be  only  stages  in  the  preparation  of  a 
Great  and  Divine  Future,  that  includes  the  spiritual 
good  and  glory  and  the  comprehensive  unity  of  the 
race — exactly  that  which  most  truly  fulfills  the  grand 
religious  ideal  of  Eobinson  and  the  New  England  fa 
thers. 

Their  word  was  " Eeformation " — "the  completion 
of  the  Keformation :"  not  Luther's  nor  Calvin's,  they 
expressly  say;  they  can  not  themselves  image  it. 
Hitherto  it  is  unconceived  by  men.  God  must  reveal 
it  in  the  light  that  breaks  forth  from  Him.  And  this 
He  will  do,  in  His  own  good  time.  It  is  already  clear 
to  us  that,  in  order  to  any  farther  progress  in-  this  di 
rection,  it  was  necessary  for  a  new  movement  to  begin, 
that  should  loosen  the  joints  of  despotism  and  emanci 
pate  the  mind  of  the  world.  And  in  order  to  this  a 
new  republic  must  be  planted  and  have  time  to  grow. 
It  must  be  seen  rising  up  in  the  strong  majesty  of  free- 


164  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT 

dom  and  youth,  outstripping  the  old  prescriptive  world 
in  enterprise  and  the  race  of  power,  covering  the  ocean 
with  its  commerce,  spreading  out  in  populous  swarms 
of  industry — planting,  building,  educating,  framing 
constitutions,  rushing  to  and  fro  in  the  smoke  and 
thunder  of  travel  along  its  mighty  rivers,  across  its  in 
land  seas,  over  its  mountain-tops  from  one  shore  to  the 
other,  strong  in  order  as  in  liberty,  a  savage  continent 
become  the  field  of  a  colossal  republican  empire,  whose 
name  is  a  name  of,  respect  'and  a  mark  of  desire  to  the 
longing  eyes  of  mankind.  And  then,  as  the  fire  of 
new  ideas  and  hopes  darts  electrically  along  the  nerves 
of  feeling  in  the  millions  of  the  race,  it  will  be  seen  that 
a  new  Christian  movement  also  begins  with  it.  Call  it 
reformation,  or  formation,  or  by  whatever  name,  it  is 
irresistible  because  it  is  intangible.  In  one  view  it  is 
only  destruction.  The  State  is  loosened  from  the 
Church.  The  Church  crumbles  down  into  fragments. 
Superstition  is  eaten  away  by  the  strong  acid  of  liberty, 
and  spiritual  despotism  flies  affrighted  from  the  broken 
loyalty  of  its  metropolis.  Protestantism  also,  divided 
and  subdivided  by  its  dialectic  quarrels,  falls  into  the 
finest,  driest  powder  of  disintegration.  Be  not  afraid. 
The  new  order  crystallizes  only  as  the  old  is  dissolved ; 
and  no  sooner  is  the  old  unity  of  orders  and  authorities 
effectually  dissolved,  than  the  reconstructive  affinities 
of  a  new  and  better  unity  begin  to  appear  in  the  solu 
tion.  Eepugnances  melt  away.  Thought  grows  catho 
lic.  Men  look  for  good  in  each  other,  as  well  as  evil. 
The  crossings  of  opinion,  by  travel  and  books,  and  tlio 


IN    THEIR    UNCONSCIOUSNESS,  165 

intermixture  of  races  and  religions,  issue  in  freer, 
broader  views  of  the  Christian  truth;  and  so  the 
"Church  of  the  Future,"  as  it  has  been  called,  gravi 
tates  inwardly  towards  those  terms  of  brotherhood  in 
which  it  may  coalesce  and  rest.  I  say  not  or  believe, 
that  Christendom  will  be  Puritanized,  or  Protestant 
ized  ;  but  what  is  better  than  either,  it  will  be  Chris 
tianized.  It  will  settle  thus  into  a  unity,  probably  not 
of  form,  but  of  practical  assent  and  love — a  Common 
wealth  of  the  Spirit,  as  much  stronger  in  its  unity  than 
the  old  satrapy  of  priestly  despotism,  as  our  republic  is 
stronger  than  any  other  government  of  the  world. 

And  this,  I  conceive,  is  the  true  issue  of  that  "  great 
hope  and  inward  zeal "  which  impelled  our  fathers  in 
the  migration.  Our  political  successes  are  but  means 
to  this  magnificent  end — instruments,  all,  and  powers 
of  religion,  as  we  have  seen  them  to  be  its  natural 
effects  and  fruits.  All  kinds  of  progress,  political  and 
spiritual,  coalesce  and  work  together  in  our  history; 
and  will  do  so  in  all  the  race,  till  finally  it  is  raised  to 
its  true  summit  of  greatness,  felicity,  and  glory,  in  God 
and  religion.  And  when  that  summit  is  reached,  it 
will  be  found  that,  as  Church  and  State  must  be  parted 
in  the  crumbling  and  disintegrating  processes  of  free 
dom,  so,  in  freedom  attained,  they  will  coalesce  again, 
not  as  Church  and  State,  but  in  such  kind  of  unity  as 
well-nigh  removes  the  distinction — the  peace  and  love 
and  world-wide  brotherhood,  established  under  moral 
ideas,  and  the  eternal  truths  of  God's  eternal  kingdom. 


166  THE    FOUNDERS    GREAT,    ETC. 

Glory  enough,  then,  is  it  for  our  sublime  Fathers,  to 
have  filled  an  office  so  conspicuous  in  the  preparation 
of  results  so  magnificent.  I  am  not  unaware  of  the  de 
fects  in  their  character.  Nay,  I  would  rather  see  and 
confess,  than  hide  them ;  for,  since  we  can  not  be  gods 
ourselves,  it  is  better  to  be  descended  of  a  race  of  men 
than  of  gods.  But,  when  I  consider  the  unambitious 
sacrifice  they  made  of  their  comforts  and  their  country, 
how  little  they  were  moved  by  vagrant  theories  and 
projects  of  social  revolution,  how  patient  of  hardships, 
how  faithful  to  their  convictions,  how  little  they  ex 
pected  of  men,  how  confidently  they  trusted  their  un 
known  future  to  God,  and,  then,  what  honor  God  has 
put  upon  them,  and  what  greater  honor  he  is  preparing 
for  their  name,  before  the  good  and  the  free  of  the 
blessed  ages  of  the  future,  I  confess  that  I  seem  even  to 
have  offended  in  attempting  to  speak  their  eulogy. 
Silence  and  a  bare  head  are  a  more  fit  tribute  than 
words.  Or,  if  we  will  erect  to  them  a  more  solid  and 
yet  worthier  monument,  there  is  none  so  appropriate 
as  to  learn  from  them,  and  for  ourselves  to  receive,  the 
principle  they  have  so  nobly  proved,  that — THE  WAY 

OF   GREATNESS  IS  THE  WAY  OF  DUTY. 


Library 

..  .  "•        -.   •  •    ' 


V. 

HISTORICAL  ESTIMATE* 


FRIENDS  AND  FELLOW-CITIZENS  : 

THE  occasion  which  has  brought  us  together  cele 
brates  another  stage  of  advance  in  the  cause  of  public 
education,  in  our  commonwealth.  When  I  accepted 
the  call  to  address  you  on  this  occasion,  I  designed  to 
prepare  a  theme  immediately  related  to  the  subject  of 
popular  education  itself.  But  on  more  mature  consid 
eration,  taking  counsel  also  of  others,  I  have  concluded 
that,  as  the  occasion  belongs  to  the  state,  and  as  I  am 
to  speak  to  the  Legislature  of  the  state,  I  can  not  do 
better  than  to  make  the  state  itself — its  character  and 
wants  and  prospects — the  subject  of  my  address.  And 
I  do  it  the  more  readily,  because  of  the  conviction  I 
feel,  and  hope  also  to  produce,  that,  if  there  be  any 
state  in  the  world,  whose  history  itself  is  specially  ap 
propriate  to  a  festival  of  popular  education,  that  state  is 
Connecticut. 

It  is  a  fact  often  remarked  by  the  students  of  history, 
that  all  the  states  or  nations  that  have  most  impressed 

*  A  Speech  for  Connecticut,  delivered  before  the  Legislature  of  the  State, 
at  the  inauguration  of  the  Normal  School,  New  Britain,  June  4,  1851. 


168  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

the  world,  by  their  high  civilization  and  their  genius, 
have  been  small  in  territorial  extent.  If  we  ask  for  the 
reason,  it  is  probably  because  society  is  sufficiently  con 
centrated  only  in  small  communities,  to  produce  the  in- 
tensest  development  of  mind  and  character.  Hence  it 
is  not  in  the  ancient  Roman  or  Persian  empires,  but  in 
little  sterile  Attica,  territorially  small  in  comparison 
even  with  Connecticut,  that  the  chief  lawgivers,  philos 
ophers,  orators,  poets  of  antiquity,  have  their  spring; 
sending  out  their  unarmed  thoughts  to  subdue  and  oc 
cupy  the  mind  of  the  world,  even  in  the  far  distant 
ages  of  time.  So  again,  and  probably  for  a  similar  rea 
son,  it  is  not  in  the  great  kingdoms  or  empires  of  West 
ern  Europe,  that  the  quickening  powers  of  modern  his 
tory  have  their  birth ;  but  in  the  Florentine  Republic, 
in  Flanders  and  the  free  commercial  cities,  in  Saxon}-, 
Holland  and  England.  Here,  in  one,  is  the  birthplace 
of  modern  art.  Here  it  is,  in  another,  that  manufac 
tures  originate  and  flourish.  Here,  again,  it  is  that, 
having  no  territory  at  home,  commerce  builds  its  ships 
and  sends  them  out  to  claim  the  seas  for  a  territory. 
Here  is  the  cradle  of  the  Reformation.  Here  the  free 
principles  of  government,  that  are  running  but  not  yet 
glorified,  took  their  spring. 

In  view  of  facts  like  these,  it  is  a  great  excellence  of 
our  confederated  form  of  government,  that  it  combines 
the  advantages  both  of  great  and  small  communities. 
We  have  a  common  country,  and  yet  we  have  many 
small  countries ;  a  vast  republic  that  embosoms  many 
small  republics,  each  possessing  a  qualified  sovereignty, 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  169 

eacli  to  have  a  character  and  make  a  history  of  its  own. 
There  is  brought  into  play,  in  this  manner,  without  in 
fringing  at  all  on  the  general  unity  of  the  republic,  a 
more  special  and  homelike  feeling  in  the  several  states 
(sharpened  by  mutual  comparison)  which,  as  a  tonic 
power  in  society,  is  necessary  to  the  highest  develop 
ments  of  character  and  civilization.  Spreading  out,  in 
a  vast  republican  empire  that  spans  a  continent,  we  are 
thus  to  be  condensed  into  small  communities,  each  dis 
tinctly  and  completely  conscious  of  itself,  and  all  acting 
as  mutual  stimulants  to  each  other.  Nor  is  anything 
more  to  be  desired,  in  this  view,  than  that  we  preserve 
our  distinct  position  as  states,  and  embody  as  much  of 
a  state  feeling  as  possible,  about  our  several  centers  of 
public  life  and  action.  Let  Virginia  have  her  "  cava 
liers  "  and  her  "  old  dominion.''  Let  Massachusetts  be 
conscious  always  of  Massachusetts,  and  let  every  man 
of  her  sons,  in  every  grade  and  party,  exult  in  the  hon 
ors  that  crown  her  history.  Let  the  Yermonter  speak 
of  his  "  Green  Mountain  state,"  with  the  sturdy  pride 
of  a  mountaineer.  Let  the  sons  of  Rhode  Island  exult 
in  the  history  and  spirit  of  their  little  fiery  republic. 
This  state  feeling  has  an  immense  value,  and  the  want 
of  it  is  a  want  much  to  be  deplored.  I  would  even 
prefer  to  have  this  feeling  developed  so  strongly  as  to 
create  some  friction  between  the  citizens  of  the  differ 
ent  states,  rather  than  to  have  it  deficient. 

Pardon  me  if  I  suggest  the  conviction,  that  this  feel 
ing  is  not  as  decided  and  distinct,  in  our  state,  as  it 
may  be  and  ought  to  be.  It  is  our  misfortune  that  we 

15 


170  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

hold  a  position  midway  between  two  capital  cities; 
that  of  New  England  on  one  side,  and  that  of  the  west 
ern  world  itself  on  the  other.  To  these  we  go  as  our 
market  places.  From  these  we  get  our  fashions,  our 
news,  and  too  often  our  prejudices  and  opinions;  or, 
what  is  worse,  just  that  neutral  state  of  both,  which  is 
created  by  the  very  incongruous  mixture  they  produce. 
Meantime,  it  is  a  great  misfortune  that  we  have  no  cap 
ital  of  our  own,  or  if  any,  a  migratory  capital.  For 
public  sentiment,  in  order  to  get  firmness  and  become 
distinctly  conscious,  must  have  fixed  objects  about 
which  it  may  embody  itself.  A  capital  which  is  here 
and  there  is  neither  here  nor  there.  It  is  no  capital, 
but  a  symbol  rather  of  vagrancy,  and  probably  of  what 
is  worse,  of  local  jealousies  which  are  too  contemptible 
to  be  inspiring.  Besides  we  are  too  little  aware  of  our 
own  noble  history  as  a  state.  The  historical  writers  of 
Massachusetts  have  been  more  numerous  and  better 
qualified  than  ours,  and  they  have  naturally  seen  the 
events  of  New  England  history,  with  the  eyes  of  metro 
politans.  We  have,  as  yet,  nothing  that  can  be  called 
a  just  and  spirited  history  of  our  state,  and  the  mass  of 
our  citizens  seem  to  suppose  that  we  have  no  history 
worthy  attention.  It  is  only  a  dry  record,  they  fancy, 
of  puritanical  severities,  destitute  of  incident  and  too 
unheroic  to  support  any  generous  emotions.  Our  sense 
of  it  is  expressed  in  the  single  epithet,  "  the  blue  law 
state"  Never  were  any  people  more  miserably  de 
frauded.  Meantime  we  are  continually  sinking  in  rela 
tive  power,  as  a  member  of  the  confederacy.  Our  pub- 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  171 

lie  men  no  longer  represent  the  fourth  state  in  the 
Union,  as  in  the  Revolution,  but  the  little,  compara 
tively  declining  state  of  Connecticut.  And  the  danger 
is  that,  as  we  sink  in  the  relative  scale  of  numbers,  the 
little  enthusiasm  left  us  will  die  out  as  a  spark  on  our 
altars,  and  we  shall  become  as  insignificant  in  the  scale 
of  moral,  as  of  territorial,  consequence. 

Accordingly  it  becomes  a  very  interesting  question 
to  the  people  of  our  state,  what  shall  we  do  to  maintain 
our  wonted  position  of  respect  and  power  ? — how  shall 
we  kindle  and  feed  the  true  fire  of  public  feeling  neces 
sary  to  our  character  and  our  standing  in  the  republic  ? 
If  there  be  a  citizen  present,  of  any  sect  or  party,  who 
can  see  no  interest  in  such  a  problem,  to  him  I  have 
nothing  to  say.  The  man  who  does  not  wish  to  love 
and  honor  the  state  in  which  he  and  his  children  are 
born,  has  no  heart  in  his  bosom,  and  it  is  not  in  any 
words  or  arguments  of  mine,  certainly,  to  give  him 
what  the  sterility  of  his  nature  denies. 

It  will  occur  to  you  at  once,  in  the  problem  raised, 
that  what  any  people  can  be  and  ought  to  be,  depends, 
in  a  principal  degree,  on  what  they  have  been.  And 
so  much  is  there  in  this  principle,  that  scarcely  any 
thing  is  necessary,  as  it  seems  to  me,  to  exalt  our  pub 
lic  consciousness  and  set  us  forward  in  the  path  of  hon 
or,  but  simply  to  receive  the  true  idea  of  our  history 
and  be  kindled  with  a  genuine  inspiration  derived  from 
a  just  recollection  of  the  past. 

In  this  view  it  is,  that  I  now  propose  to  give  you  a 


172  HISTORICAL     ESTIMATE. 

sketch,  or  outline  of  our  history ;  or  perhaps  I  should 
rather  say,  an  historic  estimate  of  our  standing  as  a 
member  of  the  republic.  In  giving  this  outline,  or  es 
timate,  I  must  deal,  of  course,  with  facts  that  are  famil 
iar  to  many ;  but  we  have  a  history  of  such  transcend 
ent  beauty,  freshened  by  so  many  inspiring  and  heroic 
incidents,  that  we  should  not  easily  tire  under  the  re 
cital,  however  familiar.  Nothing  should  tire  us  but 
the  mortifying  fact,  that  as  a  people,  we  have  not  yet 
attained  even  to  the  sense  of  those  public  honors  that 
are  laid  up  for  us  in  the  history  we  inherit.  Mr.  Ban 
croft,  the  historian,  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  rel 
ative  character  and  merit  of  the  American  States,  not 
long  ago  said, — "  There  is  no  state  in  the  Union,  and  I 
know  not  any  in  the  world,  in  whose  early  history,  if  I 
were  a  citizen,  I  could  find  more  of  which  to  be  proud, 
and  less  that  I  should  wish  to  blot."  My  own  convic 
tion  is,  that  this  early  history,  though  not  the  most 
prominent,  is  really  the  most  beautiful  that  was  ever 
permitted  to  any  state  or  people  in  the  world. 

In  tracing  this  outline,  I  shall  be  obliged  to  make 
some  reference  to  that  of  other  states,  but  I  will  en 
deavor  not  to  make  the  comparison  odious.  I  must  in 
fringe,  a  little,  in  particular,  on  some  of  the  claims  of 
Massachusetts,  and  therefore  I  ought  to  say  beforehand, 
that  no  one  is  more  sensible  than  I  to  the  historic  merit, 
or  rejoices  more  heartily  in  the  proud  eminence  of  that 
state,  as  a  member  of  the  republic,  for  it  is  a  member 
without  which,  indeed,  the  republic  would  wrant  a  nee- , 
essary  support  of  its  character  and  felicity.  It  can  the 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  173 

better  afford  to  yield  us,  therefore,  what  is  our  own  ;  or 
rather  can  the  less  afford  to  diminish  our  just  honors, 
by  claiming  to  itself  what  is  quite  unnecessary  to  its 
true  pre-eminence  of  name,  and  its  metropolitan  posi 
tion  as  a  state. 

It  may  well  be  a  subject  of  pride  to  our  state  that  the 
original  settlement  of  the  Connecticut  and  New  Haven 
colonies,  afterwards  called  Connecticut,  comprised  an 
amount  of  character  and  talent  so  very  remarkable. 

There  was  Ludlow,  said  to  have  been  the  first  law 
yer  of  the  colonies,  assisting  at  the  construction  of  the 
first  written  constitution  originated  in  the  new  world ; 
one  that  was  the  type  of  all  that  came  after,  even  that 
of  the  Republic  itself.  Whether  it  was  that  he  was  too 
much  of  a  lawyer  to  be  a  hearty  Puritan,  or  had  too 
much  of  the  unhappy  and  refractory  element  in  his 
temper  to  be  comfortable  anywhere,  it  is  somewhat 
difficult  to  judge.  But  he  became  dissatisfied,  removed 
from  Hartford  to  the  Fairfield  settlement,  and  after 
wards  to  Virginia.  The  casual  hints  and  traditions  left 
us  of  his  character,  impress  the  feeling  that  he  was  a 
very  remarkable  man,  and  excite  in  us  the  wish  that  a 
more  adequate  account  of  his  somewhat  irregular  his 
tory  had  been  preserved  to  us. 

There  was  Haynes,  also,  the  first  Governor,  a  man  of 
higher  moral  qualities,  and  different,  though  not  per 
haps  inferior,  accomplishments.  He  was  a  gentleman 
of  fortune,  holding  an  elegant  seat  in  Essex.  But  the 
American  wilderness,  with  a  right  to  his  own  religious 

15* 


174  HISTOKICAL    ESTIMATE. 

convictions,  he  could  easily  prefer  to  the  charms  of 
affluence  and  refinement.  Turning  his  back  upon 
these,  he  came  over  to  Boston.  And  it  is  a  sufficient 
proof  of  his  character  and  ability  that,  during  his  short 
stay  there,  he  was  elected  Governor  of  the  Massachu 
setts  colony.  In  the  new  colony  that  came  out  after 
wards  to  settle  on  the  banks  of  the  Connecticut,  he  was 
leader  and  father  from  the  beginning.  He  was  a  man 
of  great  practical  wisdom  and  personal  address ;  liberal 
in  his  opinions,  firm  in  his  piety,  a  man  every  way  fit 
to  lay  republican  foundations. 

Governor  Hopkins,  a  rich  Turkey  merchant  of  Lon 
don,  was  another  of  the  founders ;  a  man  of  less  grav 
ity,  though  not  inferior  in  the  qualities  of  fortune,  or 
personal  excellence,  and  superior  to  all  in  his  great  mu 
nificence.  By  his  bequest  the  Grainmar  schools  of 
Hartford  and  New  Haven,  and  the  Professorship  of  Di 
vinity  in  Harvard  College,  were  founded.  His  talents 
are  sufficiently  evinced  by  the  fact  that,  returning  on  a 
visit  to  his  estate  and  his  friends  in  England,  he  was 
detained  there  by  an  unexpected  promotion  from 
Cromwell  to  be  Commissioner  of  the  Navy  and  Admi 
ralty. 

Governor  Winthrop,  or  as  he  is  commonly  called, 
the  younger  Winthrop,  was  the  most  accomplished 
scholar  and  gentleman  of  New  England.  Educated  to 
society,  liberalized  in  his  views  by  foreign  travel,  which 
in  that  day  was  a  more  remarkable  distinction  than  it 
is  at  present,  he  was  qualified  by  his  manners  and  ad 
dress  thus  cultivated,  to  shine  as  a  courtier  in  the  high- 


HISTOKICAL    ESTIMATE.  175 

est  circles  of  influence.  A  sufficient  proof  of  his  power 
in  this  way,  may*be  found  in  the  fact  that  the  Connec 
ticut  charter  was  obtained  by  him;  an  instrument  so 
republican,  so  singularly  liberal  in  its  terms,  that  it  has 
greatly  puzzled  the  historians  to  guess  by  what  means 
any  king  could  have  been  induced  to  give  it,  and  es 
pecially  to  give  it  to  a  Puritan. 

John  Mason,  the  soldier,  I  will  speak  of  in  another 
place,  only  observing  here  that  he  was  trained  to  arms 
under  Lord  Fairfax  in  Holland,  and  gave  so  high  a  proof 
of  his  valor  and  capacity,  both  there  and  here,  that  he 
was  solicited  by  Cromwell  to  return  to  England,  and 
occupy  the  high  post  of  Major  General  in  his  army. 

Thomas  Hooker,  another  of  the  founders,  and  first 
minister  of  the  Hartford  colony,  was  distinguished  as  a 
graduate  and  fellow  of  Cambridge  University,  and 
more  as  a  minister  and  preacher  of  the  established 
church.  He  was  called  the  Luther  of  New  England, 
for  the  reason,  I  suppose,  that  the  sturdy  emphasis  and 
thunder  tone  of  his  style  resembled  him  to  the  great 
Eeformer.  "Whenever  he  visited  Boston,  after  his  re 
moval  to  Connecticut,  crowds  rushed  to  hear  him  as 
the  great  preacher  of  the  colonies.  As  a  specimen  of 
physical  humanity,  if  we  may  trust  the  descriptions 
given  of  his  person,  he  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
of  men;  uniting  the  greatest  beauty  of  countenance 
with  a  height  and  breadth  of  frame  almost  gigantic. 
The  works  he  has  left,  more  voluminous  and  various 
than  those  of  any  other  of  the  New  England  founders, 
are  his  monument. 


176  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

John  Davenport,  of  the  New  Haven  colony,  was  a 
different,  though  by  no  means  inferior,  man.  He  was 
a  son  of  the  mayor  of  Coventry,  a  student,  and  after 
wards  Bachelor  of  Divinity,  at  Oxford  University. 
Settled  as  the  incumbent  of  St.  Stephen's  Church,  in 
London,  he  exerted  great  influence  and  power  among 
the  clergy  of  the  metropolis.  His  effect  lay  more  ex 
clusively  than  Hooker's,  in  the  rigid,  argumentative 
vigor  of  his  opinions.  Probably  no  other,  unless  per 
haps  we  except  John  Cotton,  impressed  himself  more 
deeply  on  the  churches  of  New  England. 

Governor  Eaton,  of  the  New  Haven  colony,  had  be 
come  rich,  by  his  great  and  judicious  operations  as  a 
merchant  in  the  trade  of  the  Baltic.  Attracting,  in  this 
way,  the  attention  of  the  court,  he  was  honored  as  the 
King's  Ambassador  at  the  court  of  Denmark ;  evidence 
sufficiently  clear  of  the  high  estimation  in  which  he  was 
held,  and  also  of  his  talents  and  character — a  character 
not  diminished  by  the  noble  virtues  and  the  high  ca 
pacities,  revealed  in  his  long  and  beautifully  paternal 
administration  as  a  Christian  ruler  here. 

Desborough,  the  New  Haven  colony  soldier,  after 
wards  returned  to  England  and  held  the  office  of  Major 
General  in  Cromwell's  army,  a  fact  which  sufficiently 
exhibits  him. 

Such  were  nine  of  the  original  founders  of  Connecti 
cut.  What  one  of  them  has  left  a  blot  on  his  char 
acter,  or  that  of  the  state?  What  one  of  them  ever 
failed  to  fill  his  place?  And  thai,  if  I  am  right,  is  the 
truest  evidence  of  merit;  not  the  renown  which  place 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  177 

and  circumstance  may  give  to  a  far  inferior  merit,  or 
which  vain  ambition,  rioting  for  place,  may  be  able  to 
achieve.  Is  it  not  a  most  singular  felicity,  that  our  lit 
tle  state,  planted  in  a  remote  wilderness,  should  have 
had,  among  its  founders,  nine  master  spirits  and  leaders, 
so  highly  accomplished,  so  worthy  to  be  reverenced  for 
their  talents  and  their  virtues  ? 

I  have  spoken  of  the  civil  constitution  of  the  Hart 
ford  or  Connecticut  colony.  Virginia  began  her  exper 
iment  under  martial  law.  The  emigrants  in  the  May 
flower  are  sometimes  spoken  of  as  having  adopted  a 
civil  constitution  before  the  landing  at  Plymouth ;  but 
it  will  be  found  that  the  brief  document  called  by  that 
name,  is  only  a  "covenant  to  be  a  body  politic,"  not  a 
proper  constitution.  The  Massachusetts  or  Boston  col 
ony  had  the  charter  of  a  trading  company,  under  cover" 
of  which,  transferred  to  the  emigrants,  they  maintained 
a  civil  organization.  It  was  reserved  to  the  infant  col 
ony  on  the  Connecticut,  only  three  years  after  the  set 
tlement,  to  model  the  first  properly  American  constitu 
tion — a  work  in  which  the  framers  were  permitted  to 
give  body  and  shape,  for  the  first  time,  to  the  genuine 
republican  idea,  that  dwelt  as  an  actuating  force,  or  in 
most  sense,  in  all  the  New  England  colonies.  The 
trading-company  governor  and  assistants  of  the  Massa 
chusetts  colony,  having  emigrated  bodily,  and  brought 
over  the  company  charter  with  them,  had  been  con 
strained  to  allow  some  modifications,  by  which  their  re 
lation,  as  directors  of  a  stock  subscription,  were  trans- 


178  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

formed  into  a  more  properly  civil  and  popular  relation. 
In  this  manner,  the  government  was  gradually  becom 
ing  a  genuine  elective  republic,  according  to  our  sense 
of  the  term.  The  progress  made  was  wholly  in  the  di 
rection  taken  by  the  framers  of  the  Connecticut  consti 
tution  ;  though,  as  yet,  they  had  matured  no  such  re 
sult.  At  the  very  time  when  our  constitution  was 
framed,  they  were  endeavoring,  in  Massachusetts,  to 
comfort  the  "  hereditary  gentlemen  "  by  erecting  them 
into  a  kind  of  American  House  of  Lords,  called  the 
"  Standing  Council  for  Life."  The  deputies  might  be 
chosen  from  the  colony  at  large,  and  were  not  required 
to  be  inhabitants  of  the  town  by  which  they  were 
chosen.  The  freemen  were  required  to  be  members  of 
the  church,  and  all  the  officers  stood  on  the  theocratic, 
or  church  basis,  in  the  same  way.  They  were  also  de 
bating,  at  this  time,  the  civil  admissibility  or  propriety 
of  dropping  one  governor  and  choosing  another ;  Cot 
ton  and  many  of  the  principal  men  insisting  that  the 
office  was  a  virtual  freehold,  or  vested  right !  Holding 
these  points  in  view,  how  evident  is  the  distinctness 
and  the  proper  originality  of  the  Connecticut  constitu 
tion.  It  organizes  a  government  elective,  annually,  in 
all  the  departments.  It  ordains  that  no  person  shall  be 
chosen  governor  for  two  successive  years.  It  requires 
the  deputies  to  be  inhabitants  and  representatives  of 
the  towns  where  they  are  chosen.  The  elective  fran 
chise  is  not  limited  to  members  of  the  church,  but  con 
ditioned  simply  on  admission  to  the  rights  of  an  elector 
by  a  major  vote  of  the  town.  In  short,  this  constitu- 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  179 

tion,  the  first  one  written  out,  as  a  complete  frame  of 
civil  order,  in  the  new  world,  embodies  all  the  essential 
features  of  the  constitutions  of  our  states,  and  of  the 
Kepublic  itself,  as  they  exist  at  the  present  day.  It  is 
the  free  representative  plan,  which  now  distinguishes 
our  country  in  the  eyes  of  the  world. 

"Nearly  two  centuries  have  elapsed,"  says  Mr.  Ban 
croft,  "the  world  has  been  made  wiser  by  various  ex 
perience,  political  institutions  have  become  the  theme  on 
which  the  most  powerful  and  cultivated  minds  have  been 
employed,  dynasties  of  kings  have  been  dethroned,  re 
called,  dethroned  again,  and  so  many  constitutions  have 
been  framed  or  reformed,  stifled  or  subverted,  that 
memory  may  despair  of  a  complete  catalogue ;  but  the 
people  of  Connecticut  have  found  no  reason  to  deviate 
essentially  from  the  government  established  by  their 
fathers.  History  has  ever  celebrated  the  commanders 
of  armies,  on  which  victory  has  been  entailed,  the  he 
roes  who  have  won  laurels  in  scenes  of  carnage  and  ra 
pine.  Has  it  no  place  for  the  founders  of  states — the 
wise  legislators  who  struck  the  rock  in  the  wilderness, 
and  the  waters  of  liberty  gushed  forth  in  copious  and 
perennial  fountains  ?  They  who  judge  of  men,  by  their 
influence  on  public  happiness,  and  by  the  services  they 
render  to  the  human  race,  will  never  cease  to  honor  the 
memory  of  Hooker  and  Haynes." 

Had  Mr.  Bancroft  included,  with  the  names  of  Hook 
er  and  Haynes,  that  also  of  Ludlow,  placing  it  first  in 
the  list,  I  suspect  that  his  very  handsome  arid  just 
tribute  of  honor  would  have  found  its  mark  more 


180  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE 

exactly.*  We  know  that  Mr.  Ludlow  on  two  several 
occasions  after  this,  was  appointed  by  the  Legislature 
to  draft  a  code  of  laws  for  the  state,  and  there  is  much 
reason,  in  that  fact,  to  suppose  that  he  drew  the  Consti 
tution  itself.  His  impracticable,  refractory  temper  set 
him  on  farther,  as  many  suppose,  in  the  direction  of  de 
mocracy,  than  any  other  of  the  distinguished  men  of 
the  emigration;  and  they  very  naturally  imagine,  for 
this  reason,  that  they  see  his  hand,  in  particular,  in  the 
new  Constitution  framed. 

I  must  not  omit  to  mention,  what  is  specially  re 
markable  in  this  document,  that  no  mention  whatever 
is  made  in  it,  either  of  king  or  Parliament,  or  the  least 
intimation  given  of  allegiance  to  the  mother  country. 
On  the  contrary,  an  oath  of  allegiance  is  required  di 
rectly  to  the  state.  And  it  is  expressly  declared  that 
in  the  "General  Court,"  as  organized,  shall  exist  "the 
SUPREME  POWER  of  the  Commonwealth." 

The  precedence  we  had  thus  gained  in  the  matter  of 
constitutional  history,  I  am  happy  to  add,  was  honora 
bly  maintained  afterwards,  in  the  formation  of  the  Con 
stitution  of  the  Eepublic  itself;  for  it  is  a  fact,  which 
those  who  are  wont  to  sneer  at  the  blueness  and  legisla 
tive  incapacity  of  our  state  may  be  challenged  also  to 

*  Since  tliis  discourse  was  delivered,  the  short-hand  report  of  a  Sermon 
by  Hooker  has  been  discovered,  and,  by  the  great  ingenuity  of  J.  Ham 
mond  Trumbull,  Esq.,  deciphered,  in  which  it  is  clearly  made  out,  or 
shown,  that  Hooker  was  the  mover  of  this  Constitution  ;  that  its  princi 
pal  provisions  were  shaped  by  his  suggestion ;  and,  since  this  was  the 
first  of  all  the  civil  Constitutions  of  America,  that  they  all  have  a  lineal 
derivation  which  connects  them,  more  or  less  distinctly,  with  the  pulpit— 
even  the  pulpit  of  the  Hartford  pastor. 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  181 

remember,  that  Connecticut  took  the  lead  in  proposing 
and,  by  the  high  abilities  and  the  strenuous  exertions 
of  Ellsworth  and  Sherman,  finally  carried  that  distinc 
tion  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  which  is 
most  fundamental  and  peculiar  to  it  as  a  frame  of  civil 
government,  and  which  now  is  just  beginning,  as  never 
before,  to  fix  the  attention  and  attract  the  admiration 
of  the  world.  I  speak  here  of  the  federative  element, 
by  which  so  many  sovereign  states  are  kept  in  distinct 
activity,  while  included  under  a  higher  sovereignty. 
When  the  Convention  were  assembled  that  framed  the 
Constitution  of  the  Republic,  they  were  met,  at  the 
threshold,  by  a  very  important  question,  viz., — Wheth 
er  the  Constitution  to  be  framed  should  be  the  Consti 
tution  of  a  "Nation,"  or  of  a  "Confederacy  of  states." 
Mr.  Calhoun  gave  the  true  history  of  the  struggle,  in 
his  speech  before  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  Feb. 
12th,  1847.  "The  three  states,  Massachusetts,  Penn 
sylvania,  and  Virginia,"  he  said,  "were  the  largest  and 
were  actively  and  strenuously  in  favor  of  a  '  National ' 
government.  The  two  leading  spirits  were  Mr.  Hamil 
ton  of  New  York,  probably  the  author  of  the  resolu 
tion,  and  Mr.  Madison  of  Virginia.  In  the  early  stages 
of  the  Convention,  there  was  a  majority  in  favor  of  a 
'  National '  government.  But  in  this  stage  there  were 
but  eleven  states  in  the  Convention.  In  process  of 
time  New  Hampshire  came  in,  a  very  great  addition  to 
the  federal  side,  which  now  became  predominant.  It 
is  owing  mainly  to  the  states  of  Connecticut  and  New 
Jersey  that  we  have  a  <  Federal '  instead  of  a  <  National ' 

16 


182  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

government — the  best  government  instead  of  the  worst 
and  most  intolerable  on  earth.  Who  are  the  men  of 
these  states  to  whom  we  are  indebted  for  this  admirable 
government?  I  will  name  them — their  names  ought 
to  be  engraven  on  brass  and  live  forever.  They  were 
Chief  Justice  Ellsworth,  Eoger  Sherman,  and  Judge 
Patterson  of  New  Jersey.  The  other  states  farther 
South  were  blind — they  did  not  see  the  future.  But  to 
the  coolness  and  sagacity  of  these  three  .men,  aided  by 
a  few  others,  not  so  prominent,  we  owe  the  present 
Constitution." 

Such  is  the  tribute  paid  to  Connecticut  by  this  very 
distinguished  statesman  of  South  Carolina.  To  have 
claimed  this  honor  to  ourselves  might  have  been  offens 
ive.  To  receive  it,  when  it  is  tendered,  is  no  more  than 
a  duty.  Here  then  we  are  in  1851,  thirty-one  states, 
skirting  two  oceans,  still  one  republic,  under  one  tribu 
nal  of  justice,  under  one  federal  Constitution  which  we 
boast  as  a  frame  of  order  that  will  sometime  shelter  the 
rights  and  accommodate  the  manifold  interests  of  two 
hundred  millions  of  people — the  greatest  achievement 
of  legislative  wisdom  in  the  modern  history  of  the 
world — and  for  Connecticut,  who  came  as  near  being 
the  author  of  these  noble  appointments  as  she  could, 
and  do  it  by  the  votes  of  other  states — for  her  the  prin 
cipal  honor  and  reward  of  many  is  a  shrug  of  derision, 
and  the  sneer  that  calls  her  the  blue  law  state ! 

Since  I  am  speaking  here  of  our  agency  in  the  matter 
of  laws  and  constitutions,  let  me  go  a  little  farther,  and 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  183 

show  you  with  what  justice  our  laws  can  be  made,  as 
they  so  commonly  are,  a  subject  of  derision.  The  de 
risive  epithet,  by  which  we  are  so  often  distinguished, 
was  given  us  by  the  tory  renegade,  Peters,  who,  while 
better  men  were  fighting  the  battles  of  their  country, 
was  skulking  in  London,  and  getting  his  bread  there, 
by  the  stories  he  could  fabricate  about  Connecticut. 
The  mendacity  of  his  character  and  writings  has  been  a 
thousand  times  exposed,  and  the  very  laws  that  he 
published  as  the  "blue,"  shown  to  be  forgeries  invent 
ed  by  himself;  and  yet  there  are  many,  I  am  sorry  to 
say,  not  soberly  believing  that  wooden  nutmegs  WQTG 
ever  manufactured  in  Connecticut,  who  nevertheless 
accept  the  blue  law  fiction  as  the  real  fact  of  history. 
They  do  not  understand,  as  they  properly  might, 
that  the  two  greatest  dishonors  that  ever  befell  Connec 
ticut,  are  the  giving  birth  to  Benedict  Arnold  and  the 
Eeverend  Samuel  Peters — unless  it  be  a  third,  that  she 
has  given  birth  to  so  many  who,  denouncing  the 
treason  of  one,  are  none  the  less  ready  to  believe  and 
reiterate  the  equally  perfidious  and  shameful  lies  of  the 
other. 

There  is  no  state  in  the  civilized  world  whose  laws, 
headed  by  the  noble  Constitution  of  the  Hartford  Colony, 
are  more  simple  and  righteous ;  none  where  the  redress 
of  wrongs  is  less  expensive,  or  less  cumbered  by  tedious 
and  useless  technicalities.  It  is  even  doubtful  whether 
the  new  code  of  practice  in  New  York,  which  is  just 
now  attracting  so  much  attention  abroad,  requires  to  be 
named  as  an  exception.  The  first  law  Reports,  publish- 


184  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

ed  in  the  United  States,  were  Kirby's  Connecticut  Re 
ports.  The  first  law  school  of  the  nation  was  the  cele 
brated  school  of  Judge  Reeve,  at  Litchfield,  a  school 
which  gave  the  first  impulse  to  law  as  a  science  in  our 
country.  Chief  Justice  Ellsworth,  Judges  Smith,  Gould, 
Kent,  Walworth,  and  I  know  not  how  many  others 
most  distinguished  in  legal  science  in  our  country,  were 
sons  of  Connecticut.  Judge  Ellsworth  was  chairman 
of  the  committee  of  Congress  that  prepared  the  Judici 
ary  Act,  by  which  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  Nation 
was  organized ;  and  it  will  be  found  that  some  of  the 
provisions  of  that  Act  that  are  most  peculiar,  are  copied 
verbatim  from  the  statutes  of  Connecticut.  The  prac 
tice  of  the  Supreme  Court  is  often  said  to  resemble  the 
practice  of  Connecticut  more  than  that  of  any  other 
state.  And,  what  is  more,  the  form  of  the  Supreme 
Court  itself,  as  a  tribunal  of  law,  chancery,  admiralty, 
and  criminal  jurisdiction,  comprised  in  one,  is  copied 
from  the  laws  of  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut. 

It  is  true,  indeed,  reverting  to  the  earlier  laws  of  the 
commonwealth,  that  we  find  severities  enacted  against 
the  Baptists  and  Quakers,  precisely  as  in  Virginia,  New 
York,  and  Massachusetts.  How  far  these  laws  were 
executed  in  Connecticut,  or  under  what  conditions,  I 
will  not  undertake  to  say ;  but  they  seem  to  have 
been  aimed  only  at  a  class  of  fanatics,  who  made  it  a 
point  of  duty  to  violate  the  religious  convictions  of  ev 
ery  body  else ;  bringing  their  logs  of  wood  to  chop  on 
the  church  steps  on  Sunday,  and  their  spinning-wheels 
to  spin  by  the  door,  and  walking  the  streets  in  the 


HISTOKICAL    ESTIMATE.  185 

questionable  grace  of  nudity,  to  testify  against  the  sins 
of  the  people.  In  1708,  the  English  Quakers  petition 
ed  the  government  against  these  laws,  when  Governor 
Saltonstall  wrote  over  in  reply,  to  Sir  Henry  Ashurst, 
as  follows, — "  I  may  observe,  from  the  matter  of  their 
objections,  that  they  have  a  further  reach  than  to  ob 
tain  liberty  for  their  own  persuasion,  as  they  pretend ; 
(for  many  of  the  laws  they  object  against  concern  them 
no  more  than  if  they  were  Turks  or  Jews,)  for  as  there 
never  was,  that  I  know  of,  for  this  twenty  years  that  I 
have  resided  in  this  government,  any  one  Quaker,  01 
other  person,  that  suffered  upon  the  account  of  his  dif 
ferent  persuasion  in  religious  matters  from  the  body  of 
this  people,  so  neither  is  there  any  of  the  society  of 
Quakers  anywhere  in  this  government,  unless  one  fam 
ily  or  two,  on  the  line  between  us  arid  New  York; 
which  yet  I  am  not  certain  of." 

Episcopacy  was  tolerated  here  by  a  public  act,  when, 
as  yet,  there  were  not  seventy  families  in  the  state  of  that 
denomination — at  the  very  time,  too,  when  there  were 
two  Presbyterian  clergymen  lying  in  prison,  at  New 
York,  for  the  crime  of  preaching  a  sermon  and  baptiz 
ing  a  child.  After  several  months  they  obtained  their 
release,  by  paying  a  fine  of  £500  sterling.  Forty  years 
later,  Dr.  Rogers,  a  Presbyterian  clergyman,  was  de 
terred,  by  threats  of  a  similar  penalty,  from  preaching 
in  Virginia.  The  whole  system  of  tithes  was  there  in 
force,  as  stiff  as  in  Ireland  now.  Fees  for  marrying, 
churching,  and  burying  were  established  by  law.  In 
1618,  a  law  was  passed  in  Virginia,  requiring  every 

16* 


186  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

person  to  attend  church  on  Sundays  and  church  holi 
days,  on  penalty  of  "lying  neck  and  heels,"  as  it  was 
called,  for  one  night,  and  being  held  to  labor  as  a  slave, 
by  the  colony,  for  the  week  following.  Eleven  years 
after,  this  penalty  was  changed,  to  a  fine  of  one  pound 
of  tobacco,  "to  be  paid  to  the  minister."  These  facts  I 
cite,  not  to  bring  reproach  on  other  states,  but  simply 
to  show  that  religious  intolerance  was  the  manner  of 
the  times.  If,  in  the  New  Haven  colony,  it  is  a  re 
proach  that  only  members  of  the  church  were  permitted 
to  vote,  the  same  was  true,  under  the  English  constitu 
tion,  even  down  to  within  our  memory.  There  is  no 
sufficient  evidence  that  any  person  was  ever  executed 
for  witchcraft  in  this  state,  though  there  were  several 
trials,  and  one  or  two  convictions ;  which  the  Governor 
and  Council  contrived,  I  believe,  in  one  way  or  anoth 
er,  to  release.*  Governor  Winthrop  professed  sincere 
scruples  about  the  crime  itself.  How  it  was  in  Massa 
chusetts  is  sufficiently  known  to  us  all.  An  execution 
for  this  crime  took  place  in  Switzerland,  in  1760 ;  at 
Wurtzberg  in  Germany,  in  1749 ;  also  in  Scotland,  in 
1722.  And,  as  late  as  1716,  a  pfbor  woman,  and  her 
daughter  only  nine  years  old,  were  publicly  hanged  in 
England,  for  selling  their  souls  to  the  devil,  and  for 
raising  a  storm  by  the  conjuration  of  pulling  off  their 
stockings.  The  English  statute  against  witchcraft  stood 
unrepealed,  even  down  to  1736. 

I  confess  I  was  never  able  to  see  why  so  heavy  a 

*  See  Kingsley's  Historical  discourse  (p.  101)  where  a  different  opinion 
is  held. 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  187 

share  of  the  odium  of  this  kind  of  legislation  should  fall 
on  the  state  of  Connecticut;  whose  only  reproach,  in 
the  matter  is,  that  she  was  not  farther  in  advance  of  the 
civilized  world,  by  another  half  century.  If  the  citi 
zens  of  other  states  are  able  sometimes  to  amuse  them 
selves  at  our  expense,  we  certainly  are  not  required  to 
add  to  their  amusement  by  an  over-sensitive  resentment. 
But  if  any  son  or  citizen  of  Connecticut  is  willing  to  ac 
cept  and  appropriate,  as  characteristic  of  its  history,  the 
slang  epithet  which  perpetuates  a  tory  lie  and  forgery, 
then  I  have  only  to  say  that  we  have  just  so  much  rea 
son  to  be  ashamed  of  the  state — on  his  account.  He  is 
either  raw  enough  to  be  taken  by  a  very  low  impos 
ture,  or  base  enough  in  feeling  to  enjoy  a  sneer  at  his 
mother's  honor. 

We  have  some  right,  I  think,  to  another  kind  of  dis 
tinction,  which  we  have  never  asserted ;  that,  namely, 
of  being  the  colony  most  distinctively  independent  in 
our  character  and  proceedings,  in  the  times  of  the  co 
lonial  history,  previous  to  the  revolution.  We  were 
able  to  be  so,  in  part,  from  our  more  retired  and  shel 
tered  position,  and  partly,  also,  because  of  the  very  pe 
culiar  terms  of  our  charter.  Massachusetts,  Virginia, 
New  York,  Pennsylvania,  all  the  other  states,  with  the 
exception  of  Khocle  Island,  were  obliged  by  their  char 
ters,  or  the  vacation  of  their  charters,  to  accept  a  chief 
executive,  or  governor,  appointed  by  the  crown.  These 
royal  governors  had  a  negative  upon  the  laws.  They 
personated  the  king,  maintaining  a  kind  of  court  pomp 


188  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

and  majesty,  overawing  the  people,  thwarting  their 
legislation,  wielding  a  legal  control,  in  right  of  the 
king,  over  the  whole  military  force,  much  as  at  the 
present  day  in  Canada.  But  the  charter  obtained  for 
Connecticut,  by  the  singular  address  of  Winthrop,  al 
lowed  us  to  choose  our  own  governor  and  exercise  all 
the  functions  of  civil  order.  And  so  we  grew  up,  as  a 
people,  unawed  by  the  pageants  of  royalty,  a  race  of 
simple,  self-governing  republicans. 

For  three  little  towns,  on  the  Connecticut,  to  declare 
independence  of  the  mother  country,  we  can  easily  see, 
would  have  been  the  part  of  madness — probably  they 
had  not  so  much  as  a  thought  of  it — and  yet  they  had 
a  something,  a  wish,  an  instinct,  call  it  what  you  will, 
which  could  write  itself  properly  out,  in  their  constitu 
tion,  only  in  the  words,  "  Supreme  Power."  And  I  see 
not  how  these  words,  formally  asserting  the  sovereignty 
of  their  General  Court,  escaped  chastisement ;  unless  it 
was  that  they  found  a  shelter  for  the  crime,  in  their  re 
moteness  and  the  obscurity  of  their  position.  In  this 
view,  there  was  a  kind  of  sublimity  in  the  sturdy 
growth  of  their  sheltered  and  silent  state.  They  had 
no  theories  of  democracy  to  assert.  They  put  on  no 
brave  airs  for  liberty.  But  the}^  loved  their  conscience 
and  their  religion,  and  in  just  the  same  degree,  loved 
not  to  be  meddled  with.  In  this  habit  their  children 
grew  up.  Their  very  intelligence  became  an  eye  of 
jealousy,  and  they  acknowledged  the  right  of  the  king, 
much  as  when  we  acknowledge  the  lightning,  in  lifting 
a  rod  to  carry  it — off!  But  when  the  king  came  down 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  189 

upon  them,  in  some  act  of  authority  or  royal  interfer 
ence  that  touched  the  security  of  their  principles  or 
their  position,  then  it  was  as  if  the  Great  Being,  who 
had  "ordained  whatsoever  comes  to  pass,"  had  ordained 
that  some  things  should  not  come  to  pass. 

On  as  many  as  four  several  occasions,  during  the  co 
lonial  history,  they  set  themselves  in  open  conflict  with 
the  king's  authority,  and  triumphed  by  their  determin 
ation.  First  in  the  case  of  the  regicide  Judges,  secreted 
at  New  Haven ;  when  Davenport  took  for  his  text — 
"Make  thy  shadow  as  night  in  the  midst  of  noon,  hide 
the  outcasts,  bewray  not  him  that  wandereth."  The 
king's  officers  were  active  in  the  search ;  but,  for  some 
reason,  the  noon  was  as  the  night,  and  their  victims 
could  not  be  found.  Massachusetts  expostulated  with 
the  refractory  people  of  New  Haven,  representing  how 
much  they  would  endanger  all  the  colonies,  if  they  did 
not  hasten  to  address  His  Majesty  in  some  proper  ex 
cuse,  to  which  they  replied  that  they  were  ignorant  of 
the  form ! 

Again,  by  rallying  a  force  at  Saybrook,  when  Sir 
Edmund  Andross  landed  there,  to  proclaim  the  new 
patent  of  the  Duke  of  York,  and  take  possession  of  the 
town — silencing  him  in  the  act,  and  compelling  him  to 
return  to  his  ships. 

A  third  time,  when  this  same  officer  came  on  to 
Hartford,  to  vacate  the  charter — a  passage  of  history 
commemorated  by  the  noble  oak,  whose  gnarled  trunk 
and  limbs  still  remain,  to  represent  the  crabbed  inde 
pendence  of  the  men,  who  would  not  yield  their  rights 


190  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

to  the  royal  mandate.  May  the  old  oak  live  for 
ever  ! 

And  yet  a  fourth  time,  by  asserting  and  vindicating, 
what  is  the  essential  attribute  of  political  independence, 
viz.,  the  control  and  sovereignty  of  their  own  military 
force.  Governor  Fletcher  came  on  to  Hartford,  from 
New  York,  to  demand  the  control  of  the  militia  in  the 
king's  name;  and  when  he  insisted  on  reading  the 
proclamation,  he  was  drummed  into  silence  by  com 
mand  of  Wadsworth,  the  chief  officer.  When  the 
drummer  slacked,  the  word  was,  "  Drum,  I  say ;"  and 
to  the  Governor,  "Stop,  Sir,  or  I  will  make  the  sun 
shine  through  you  in  an  instant."  He  withdrew,  the 
point  was  carried,  and  the  control  of  the  military  was 
retained.  After  that,  when  Pitt  at  the  height  of  his 
power  wanted  troops  from  Connecticut,  he  sent  the  re 
quest  of  a  levy  to  the  Legislature,  not  a  military  order. 

It  is  not  my  design,  as  you  have  seen,  to  represent, 
in  these  facts  of  history,  that  we  had  consciously  and 
purposely  set  up  for  independence ;  but  only  that  we 
had  so  much  of  the  self-governing  spirit  in  us,  nourish 
ed  by  the  scope  of  our  charter,  and  sheltered  by  our 
more  retired  position,  that  we  took  our  independence 
before  we  knew  it,  and  had  the  reality  before  we  made 
the  claim. 

In  Massachusetts,  the  metropolitan  colony,  which  had 
a  more  open  relation  to  the  mother  country,  the  spirit 
of  independence  was  checked  continually  by  considera 
tions  of  prudence,  and,  at  Boston  especially,  by  the 
presence  of  the  king  and  a  kind  of  court  influence 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  191 

maintained  by  the  royal  governors.  Accordingly  the 
Eev.  Daniel  Barber,  who  went  on  with  the  Connecticut 
troops  to  Boston,  at  the  first  outbreak  of  the  Revolu 
tion,  says, — "In  our  march  through  Connecticut,  the 
inhabitants  seemed  to  view  us  with  joy  and  gladness, 
but  when  we  came  into  Massachusetts  and  advanced 
nearer  to  Boston,  the  inhabitants,  where  we  stopped, 
seemed  to  have  no  better  opinion  of  us  than  if  we  had 
been  a  banditti  of  rogues  and  thieves ;  which  mortified 
our  feelings,  and  drew  from  us  expressions  of  angry  re 
sentment  " — a  fact  in  which  we  see,  what  could  not  be 
otherwise,  that  the  people  nearest  to  the  court  influence 
in  the  metropolis,  were  many  of  them  infected  with  a 
spirit  opposite  to  the  cause  of  the  colonies.  But  here 
in  the  rear  ground,  and  a  little  removed  from  observa 
tion,  it  was  far  otherwise.  Here  the  sturdy  spirit  found 
room  to  grow  and  embody  itself,  unrestrained  by  au 
thority,  uncorrupted  by  mixtures  of  opposing  influence. 
How  necessary  this  sound  rear-work  of  independence 
and  homogeneous  feeling  in  Connecticut  may  have  been 
to  the  confidence,  and  the  finally  decisive  action,  of  the 
men  who  immediately  confronted  the  royal  supremacy 
in  Massachusetts,  we  may  never  know.  Suffice  it  to 
say  that  the  causes  of  public  events  most  prominent, 
are  not  always  the  most  real  and  effective. 

It  is  noticeable,  also,  that  we  went  into  the  revolution 
under  peculiar  advantages.  We  were  not  obliged  to 
fall  into  civil  disorganization  by  ejecting  a  royal  gover 
nor,  in  the  manner  of  other  colonies.  Our  state  was  full 
organized,  under  a  chief  magistracy  of  her  own,  having 


192  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

command  of  her  own  military  force,  ready  to  move, 
without  loosing  a  pin  in  her  political  fabric.  One  of 
the  royal  governors  ejected  was  even  sent  to  Connecti 
cut  for  safe  keeping.  We  had  kept  up  our  fire  in  the 
rear,  making  every  hamlet  and  village  ring  with  defi 
ance,  and  erecting  our  poles  of  liberty  on  every  hill, 
during  the  very  important  interval  between  the  passage 
of  the  Boston  port  bill  and  the  stamp  act.  And  so 
fierce  and  universal  was  the  spirit  of  resistance  here, 
that,  while  the  stamps  were  carried  into  all  the  other 
states,  no  officer  of  the  crown  dared  undertake  the  sale 
of  them  in  Connecticut. 

The  forwardness  of  our  state  in  the  matter  of  inde 
pendence,  is  sufficiently  evinced  by  the  fact  that  our 
Legislature  passed  a  bill,  on  the  14th  of  June  previous 
to  the  memorable  4th  of  July,  instructing  her  delegates 
to  urge  an  immediate  declaration  of  independence. 
Nor  did  she  sign  that  declaration  by  the  hands  only  of 
her  own  delegates.  Two  of  her  descen dents  in  New 
Jersey  and  one  in  Georgia,  are  among  the  names  en 
rolled  in  that  honored  instrument.  Georgia  withheld 
herself,  at  first,  from  the  Revolution.  But  there  was  a 
little  Puritan  settlement  at  Midway  in  that  state,  in 
which,  as  a  physician  and  a  man  of  public  influence, 
resided  Doctor  Hall,  a  native  of  Wallingford,  and  a 
graduate  of  Yale  College.  These  Midway  Puritans 
were  resolved  to  have  their  part  in  the  Revolution,  at 
all  hazards.  They  made  choice  of  Doctor  Hall  and 
sent  him  on  to  the  Congress  as  their  delegate.  He 
signed  the  declaration  and,  the  next  year,  Georgia  came 


HISTORICAL   ESTIMATE.  193 

forward  and  took  her  place,  led  into  the  Eevolution  by 
the  hand  of  Connecticut.  Is  it  then  too  much  to  affirm, 
in  view  of  all  these  facts,  that  if  any  state  in  the  Union 
deserves  to  be  called  the  Independent  State,  Connecti 
cut  may  safely  challenge  that  honor. 

I  must  also  speak  of  the  military  honors  of  our  his 
tory.  Martial  distinctions  are  not  the  highest,  and  yet 
there  is  a  kind  of  military  glory  that  can  never  fade ; 
that,  I  mean,  which  is  gained  in  the  defense  of  justice 
and  liberty,  as  distinguished  from  the  idle  bravery  of 
chivalry,  and  the  rapacious  violence  of  conquest. 

It  is  abundantly  clear,  as  a  fact  of  history,  that  our 
two  colonies  meant,  in  their  public  relations  with  the 
Indian  tribes,  to  fulfill  the  exactest  terms  of  justice  and 
good  neighborhood.  Still  it  happened,  doubtless,  as  it 
always  will  in  such  cases,  that  individuals,  instigated 
by  a  spirit  of  insolence,  or  by  the  cupidity  of  gain,  fre 
quently  trespassed  on  their  rights,  in  acts  of  bitter  out 
rage.  Such  wrongs  could  not  be  absolutely  prevented, 
and,  by  reason  of  a  diversity  of  language  and  the  sepa 
rate,  wild  habit  of  the  Indians,  could  not  be  effectually 
investigated  or  redressed.  Exasperated,  in  this  man 
ner,  they  of  course  would  take  their  revenge  in  acts  of 
violence  and  blood ;  and  then  it  would  be  necessary  to 
arm  the  public  force  against  them,  for  the  public  pro 
tection.  It  is  very  easy  to  theorize  in  this  matter,  and 
say  how  it  should  be,  but  this  issue,  much  as  we  de 
plore  it,  could  not  well  be  avoided. 

It  is  affirmed  and,  by  many,  believed,  that  the  Pe- 
17 


1 9-i  HIS  T  OHIO  A  L     K  S  T  1  M  A  T  E  . 

quods  had  been  instigated  in  this  manner,  to  the  thirty 
murders  perpetrated  in  their  incursions  on  the  river 
settlements,  during  the  winter  and  spring  of  1637.  Be 
it  so,  the  colony  must  still  be  defended.  Every  settle 
ment  is  filled  with  consternation.  They  set  their  watch 
by  night,  and  tend  their  signal  flag  by  day,  to  give  no 
tice  of  enemies.  The  Pequods  have  been  described  to 
them  as  one  of  the  most  numerous  and  powerful  of  the 
Indian  tribes.  They  imagine  them  dwelling  in  the 
deep  woods,  guessing  how  powerful  they  may  be,  and 
at  what  hour  the  foe  may  burst  upon  their  settlement, 
here  or  there,  in  the  fury  of  savage  war.  What  they 
so  long  and  wearily  dread,  in  the  power  of  their  enemy, 
they,  of  course,  magnify.  It  is  no  time  now  for  such 
points  of  casuistry  as  entertain  us,  at  our  distance  of 
time.  The  hour  has  come,  a  decisive  blow  must  be 
struck;  for  the  clanger  and  the  dread  are  no  longer 
supportable. 

It  had  also  been  ascertained  that  the  Pequods  were 
endeavoring  to  enlist  all  the  other  tribes,  in  a  common 
cause  against  the  colonies.  Massachusetts,  accordingly, 
had  agreed  to  join  the  expedition  against  them,  but  at 
what  point  the  junction  would  be  made  could  not  be 
settled  beforehand.  With  his  ninety  men,  a  full  half 
the  able  bodied  men  of  the  colony,  Capt.  Mason  de 
scended  the  river  to  Saybrook,  passed  round  to  the 
Narragansett  Bay,  and,  falling  in  there  with  a  small 
party  of  Massachusetts  men  returning  from  Block  Isl 
and,  made  his  landing.  His  inferior  officers,  when  he 
opened  his  plan,  proposing  to  march  directly  into  the 


HISTOKICAL    ESTIMATE.  195 

Pequod  country,  waiting  for  no  junction  with  the  Mas 
sachusetts  troops,  strenuously  opposed  him.  They  were 
going  into  an  unknown  country  to  meet  an  unknown 
enemy.  What  could  assure  this  little  band  of  men 
against  extermination,  righting  in  the  woods  with  a 
fierce  nation  of  savages?  But  the  chaplain  led  them  to 
God  for  direction,  and  they  yielded  their  dissent.  And 
here,  in  the  stand  of  Mason,  is,  in  fact,  the  battle  and 
the  victory ;  for  they  came  upon  the  great  fort  of  the 
enemy,  after  a  rapid  march,  and  took  it  so  completely 
by  surprise,  that  what  was  to  be  a  battle  became  only  a 
conflagration  and  a  massacre.  The  glory  is  not  here, 
but  in  the  celerity  of  movement  and  the  peremptory 
military  decision  of  the  leadership.  They  are '  too 
few  in  number  to  make  prisoners  of  their  enemy, 
and  another  body  of  the  tribe,  whose  number  is  un 
known,  are  near  at  hand.  Accordingly  their  work 
must  be  short  and  decisive — a  work  they  make  it  of 
extermination.  We  look  on  the  scene  with  sadness 
and  with  mixtures  of  revolted  feeling ;  but  we  are  none 
the  less  able  to  see,  in  this  exploit  of  Mason,  with  his 
ninety  men,  why  Cromwell  wanted  him  for  a  Major 
Greneral  in  his  army.  He  understands,  we  perceive,  as 
thoroughly  as  Napoleon,  that  celerity  and  decision  are 
sometimes  necessary  elements  of  success,  and  even  of 
safety.  This  kind  of  generalship,  too,  requires  a  great 
deal  more  of  nerve  and  military  courage  often,  than  the 
fighting  of  a  hard  contested  battle,  after  it  is  once 
begun. 

This  reduction  of  the  Pequods  is  remarkable  as  being 


196  IT  I  S  T  O  R  I  C  A  I ,     E  S  T  I  M  A  T  K  . 

the  first  proper  military  expedition,  or  trial  of  arms  in 
ISTew  England.  Jf  they  had  been  wronged,  we  pity 
them.  If  not,  still  we  pity  them.  In  any  view,  the 
colony  has  done  what  it  could  not  avoid,  and  the  long 
agony  of  their  fear  is  over.  Their  wives  and  children 
can  sleep  in  peace. 

Mason  returned  with  his  little  Puritan  legion  to 
Hartford,  having  lost  in  the  encounter  but  a  single 
man ;  the  guns  of  the  fort  at  Say  brook  booming  out 
through  the  forests,  in  a  salute  of  victory,  as  he  passed. 
He  was  immediately  complimented,  by  the  Legislature, 
in  the  appointment  of  general-in-chief  to  the  colony, 
and  Hooker  was  designated  to  deliver  him  his  commis 
sion,  in  presence  of  the  assembled  people. 

Here  is  a  scene  for  the  painter  of  some  future  day — I 
see  it  even  now  before  me.  In  the  distance  and  behind 
the  huts  of  Hartford,  waves  the  signal  flag  by  which 
the  town  watch  is  to  give  notice  of  enemies.  In  the 
foreground,  stands  the  tall,  swart  form  of  the  soldier  in 
his  armor;  and  before  him,  in  sacred  apostolic  majesty, 
the  manly  Hooker.  Haynes  and  Hopkins,  with  the 
Legislature  and  the  hardy,  toil-worn  settlers  and  their 
wives  and  daughters,  are  gathered  round  them  in  close 
order,  gazing  with  moistened  eyes  at  the  hand  which 
lifts  the  open  commission  to  God,  and  listening  to  the 
fervent  prayer  that  the  God  of  Israel  will  endue  his  ser 
vant,  as  heretofore,  with  courage  and  counsel  to  lead 
them  in  the  days  of  their  future  peril.  True  there  is 
nothing  classic  in  this  scene.  This  is  no  crown  be 
stowed  at  the  Olympic  games,  or  at  a  Eoman  triumph, 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  197 

and  yet  there  is  a  severe,  primitive  sublimity  in  the 
picture,  that  will  sometime  be  invested  with  feelings  of 
the  deepest  reverence.  Has  not  the  time  already  come, 
when  the  people  of  Connecticut  will  gladly  testify  that 
reverence,  by  a  monument  that  shall  make  the  beautiful 
valley  of  the  Yantic,  where  Mason  sleeps,  as  beautifully 
historic,  and  be  a  mark  to  the  eye,  from  one  of  the  most 
ancient  and  loveliest,  as  well  as  most  populous,  towns 
of  our  ancient  commonwealth? 

The  conduct  of  our  state,  in  two  other  chapters  of 
history  of  a  later  date,  displays  a  moral  dignity,  as  well 
as  military  firmness,  of  which  we  have  the  highest  rea 
son  to  be  proud.  The  Dutch  governor  of  New  York, 
it  was  ascertained,  had  entered  into  an  alliance  with  the 
savages,  to  make  war  upon  the  English  colonies.  The 
Commissioners  of  these  colonies,  already  united  in  a 
federal  compact  with  each  other,  had  voted  a  levy  of 
troops  for  the  defense,  and  assessed  the  number  to  be 
raised  by  each.  The  Hartford  and  New  Haven  colo 
nies  were  prompt  and  indefatigable  in  their  exertions, 
as  their  own  more  immediate  exposure  required.  Plym 
outh  was  ready  and  kept  her  faith,  but  Massachusetts, 
tempted,  for  once,  to  an  act  of  perfidy  most  sadly  con 
trasted  with  her  noble  history,  refused ;  leaving  the  Con 
necticut  colonies  cruelly  exposed  to  the  whole  force  of 
the  enemy.  The  condition  of  our  people  was  one  of 
distressing  excitement.  Every  hour,  for  a  whole  half 
year,  it  was  expected  that  the  invasion  would  begin. 
Forts  were  erected,  a  small  frigate  was  manned,  night 
and  day  were  spent  in  watching;  till,  at  length,  the 


198  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

victory  of  the  English  over  the  Dutch  fleet  at  sea  put 
an  end  to  the  danger ;  only  leaving  the  two  colonies  of 
Connecticut  overwhelmed  by  enormous  expenses  incur 
red  for  their  defense.  The  indignation  was  universal. 
And  when  the  commissioners  were  assembled  again,  at 
their  annual  meeting,  our  Commissioners  magnanimous 
ly  refused  to  sit  with  those  from  Massachusetts,  without 
some  atonement  for  their  ignominious  breach  of  faith 
and  duty. 

Then  came  the  turn  of  Massachusetts.  King  Philip, 
as  he  was  called,  had  rallied  all  the  savage  tribes  of 
New  England,  for  a  last,  desperate  effort  to  expel  and 
exterminate  the  colonies.  The  havoc  was  dreadful — 
whole  towns  swept  away  by  the  nightly  incursions 
of  the  savages,  wives  and  children  massacred,  com 
panies  of  troops  surprised  and  butchered,  all  the  fron-1 
tier  settlements  of  Massachusetts  smoking  in  blood  and 
conflagration.  It  was  the  dark  day  of  the  colonies, 
and,  for  a  time,  it  really  seemed  that  they  must  be  ex 
terminated.  Then  it  was  that  Connecticut  proved  her 
fidelity,  sending  out  five  companies  of  troops  to  the  aid 
of  Massachusetts.  And  the  combined  troops  marched 
together,  in  a  cold  snowy  day,  fifteen  miles  through 
the  forests,  fought  in  the  deep  snow  one  of  the  bloodiest 
battles  on  record,  and  then  marched  back,  carrying 
their  wounded  with  them,  to  encamp  in  the  open  air. 
The  attack  was  upon  the  great  fort  of  the  Narragan- 
setts,  and  was  led  by  the  Massachusetts  troops,  in  a 
spirit  of  valor  worthy  of  success.  Unable,  however,  to 
force  the  entrance,  they  were  obliged,  after  suffering 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  199 

greatly  from  the  enemy,  to  fall  back.  The  Connecticut 
troops  were  then  brought  up,  and  we  may  judge  of 
their  determination  by  the  fact,  that  nearly  one-third 
of  their  number  fell  in  the  assault,  and  that,  out  of  their 
five  captains,  three  were  killed  on  the  spot,  and  a  fourth 
died  of  his  wounds  afterwards.  The  assault  was  car 
ried.  The  second  winter,  four  companies  of  rangers, 
raised  in  New  London  county,  were  sent  out,  by  turns, 
to  scour  the  Narragansett  country,  and  harrass  the  en 
emy  by  a  continual  desultory  warfare.  Finally,  the 
tide  was  turned,  and  the  capture  of  Philip  ended  the 
struggle.  Thus  nobly  did  Connecticut  repay  the  in 
justice  and  wrong  of  her  sister  colony. 

We  can  hardly  imagine  it,  but  there  was  seldom  a 
year  in  the  early  history  of  our  state,  now  so  quiet  and 
remote  from  the  turmoils  of  war,  when  she  was  not 
aiarching  her  troops,  one  way  or  another,  to  defend  her 
own,  or  more  commonly  some  neighboring  settlement — 
to  Albany,  to  Brookfield,  to  Springfield,  to  the  Narra- 
gansett  country,  to  Schenectady,  to  Crown  Point,  to 
Louisburg,  to  Canada — issuing  bills  of  credit,  levying, 
all  the  while,  enormous  taxes,  and  maintaining  a  war 
like  activity  scarcely  surpassed  by  Lacedemon  itself. 
There  was  never  a  spark  of  chivalry  in  her  leaders, 
and  yet  there  was  never  a  coward  among  them.  Their 
courage  had  the  Christian  stamp ;  it  was  practical  and 
related  to  duty  ;  always  exerted  for  some  object  of  de 
fense  and  safety.  They  knew  nothing  of  fighting  with 
out  an  object,  and  when  they  had  one,  they  went  to  the 
work  bravely,  simply  because  it  was  sound  economy  to 


200  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

fight  well !  We  are  accustomed  to  speak  of  the  wars 
of  the  revolution,  but  these  earlier  wars,  so  little  re 
membered,  were  far  more  adventurous  and  required  a 
much  stouter  endurance. 

When  combined  with  the  British  forces,  our  troops 
were,  of  course,  commanded  in  chief  by  British  leaders, 
and  these  were  generally  incompetent  to  the  kind  of 
warfare  necessary  in  this  country.  Scarcely  ever  did 
they  lose  a  battle  or  suffer  a  defeat  in  these  wars,  in 
which  our  provincial  captains  did  not  first  protest 
against  their  plan.  Sometimes  the  Parliament  were 
constrained  to  compliment  our  troops,  but  more  gener 
ally,  if  some  exploit  was  carried  by  the  prowess  of  a 
colonial  captain,  as  in  the  case  of  Lyman,  the  hero  of 
Crown  Point,  his  superior  was  knighted  and  he  forgot 
ten.  In  the  last  French  war,  under  Pitt,  when  a  large 
part  of  her  little  territory  was  yet  a  wilderness,  Connec 
ticut  raised  and  kept  in  the  field,  at  her  own  expense, 
for  three  successive  years,  5,000  men ;  so  great  was  her 
endurance  and  her  zeal  against  the  common  enemy.  It 
was  here  that  Putnam  and  Worcester  took  their  lessons 
of  exercise  in  the  military  art,  and  practiced  their  cour 
age  for  a  more  serious  and  eventful  struggle. 

This  eventful  struggle  came ;  finding  no  state  readier 
to  act  a  worthy  and  heroic  part  in  it.  As  early  as 
September,  1774,  the  false  rumor  of  an  outbreak  in 
Boston  had  set  the  whole  military  force  of  the  colony 
in  motion — a  sign,  before  the  time,  of  what  was  to  be 
done  when  the  time  arrived.  In  April  of  1775,  before 
the  battle  of  Lexington  and  before  the  Revolution  could 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  201 

be  generally  regarded  as  an  ascertained  fact,  a  circle  of 
sagacious,  patriotic  men  assembled  in  Hartford,  per 
ceiving  the  immense  advantage  that  would  accrue  to  the 
cause,  from  the  capture  and  possession  of  the  Northern 
fortresses  that  commanded  Lake  Champlain — Ticonder- 
oga  and  Crown  Point — embarked  in  a  scheme,  to  seize 
them,  by  a  surprise  of  the  British  garrisons.  They  had 
a  secret  understanding  with  Governor  Trumbull,  and 
drew  their  funds  from  the  public  treasury,  by  a  note 
under  the  joint  signature  of  their  names,  eleven  in  num 
ber.  The  enterprise  was  committed  to  Ethan  Allen 
and  Seth  Warner,  natives,  one  of  Litchfield,  and  the 
other  of  Eoxbury,  now  residing  in  Yermont.  A  few 
men  were  sent  on  from  Connecticut,  forty  or  fifty  more 
were  collected  in  Berkshire  county,  in  Massachusetts, 
and  the  remainder  were  enlisted  in  Yermont.  The  en 
terprise  was  successful.  More  than  two  hundred  can 
non  were  captured — the  same  that  were  afterwards 
dragged  across  the  mountains  to  Boston,  and  employed 
by  Washington  in  the  siege  and  final  expulsion  of  Lord 
Howe.  When  the  commander,  of  Ticonderoga,  in 
quired  by  what  authority  the  surrender  was  demanded, 
Allen's  reply  was — "  In  the  name  of  the  Great  Jehovah 
and  the  Continental  Congress."  That  he  had  no  au 
thority  from  the  Continental  Congress,  save  what  had 
come  to  him  through  the  Great  Jehovah,  is  certain 
ly  very  clear;  hence,  I  suppose,  the  form  of  his  an 
swer. 

It  appears  that  Benedict  Arnold  of  Norwich  went  on 
to  Boston  about  this  time  and  obtained  a  commission 


202  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

from  the  Committee  of  Safety  there,  authorizing  him  to 
conduct,  in  their  behalf,  a  similar  undertaking.  But 
finding  himself  anticipated,  when  he  reached  Vermont, 
he  was  obliged  to  waive  his  right  of  command  and  took 
whis  place,  as  a  volunteer,  under  Allen.  Some  of  the 
Massachusetts  historians,  who  have  claimed  the  credit 
of  this  exploit,  in  behalf  of  their  state,  are  clearly  seen, 
therefore,  to  have  trespassed  on  the  honors  of  Connecti 
cut.  Connecticut  projected  and  executed  the  move 
ment.  The,  treasury  of  Connecticut  footed  the  bills. 
The  prisoners  were  brought  to  Connecticut  and  quar 
tered  at  West  Hartford. 

The  surrender  of  these  fortresses  took  place  on  the 
10th  of  May.  And  before  the  capture  was  consum 
mated,  the  news  of  the  battles  of  Concord  and  Lexing 
ton  had  arrived,  showing  that  resistance  to  the  mother 
country  was  openly  begun.  But  the  campaign  was  or 
ganized  and  set  on  foot,  it  will  be  observed,  long  before 
these  battles,  and  was,  in  fact,  a  volunteering,  by  the 
Connecticut  leaders,  of  the  state  of  war  itself.  Mean 
time,  Putnam,  waiting  to  catch  the  first  note  of  out 
break,  left  his  plow  in  the  furrow,  when  the  news  ar 
rived,  not  remaining,  it  is  even  said,  to  unyoke  his 
oxen,  and  flew  to  the  field  of  action.  The  troops  of 
the  state  poured  after  him,  to  be  gathered  under  his 
command.  The  battle  of  Bunker  Hill  soon  followed. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  question,  who  commanded 
in  this  very  celebrated  battle,  has  never  yet  been  set 
tled.  The  Massachusetts  historians  have  generally 
maintained  that  Prescott  was  the  commander ;  and 


HISTORICAL     ESTIMATE.  203 

some  of  them  have  even  gone  so  far  as  not  to  recognize 
the  presence  of  Putnam  in  it.  The  more  candid  and 
moderate  have  generally  admitted  his  presence  in  the 
field  and  the  valuable  service  rendered,  by  his  inspirit 
ing  and  heroic  conduct.  Prescott,  they  say,  command 
ed  in  the  trenches,  and  Putnam  was  engaged  outside  of 
the  trenches,  in  the  open  field  and  about  the  other  hill 
by  which  the  redoubt  was  overlooked  or  commanded ; 
doing  what  he  could  for  the  success  of  the  day,  but 
only  in  virtue  of  the  commission  he  had  from  his  own 
personal  enthusiasm.  As  regards  any  chief  command 
over  the  whole  field  of  operations,  they  suppose  there 
probably  was  none,  alleging  that  the  army  was  really 
not  organized,  and  no  scale  of  proper  military  prece 
dence  established. 

As  respects  this  latter  point,  which  at  first  view 
might  seem  to  be  true,  they  are  certainly  in  a  mistake. 
For  Putnam  had  been  expressly  ordered,  by  our  Legis 
lature,  to  put  himself  under  the  chief  command  of  Mas 
sachusetts  ;  as  the  conditions  of  the  case  evidently  re 
quired.  He  was  serving,  therefore,  as  an  integral  part 
of  the  military  force  of  Massachusetts.  Neither  was  he, 
or  Prescott,  or  Ward  the  general-in-chief  of  the  arm}^, 
so  raw  in  the  practice  of  arms  as  not  to  know  that,  be 
ing  on  the  ground  as  a  general  of  brigade,  the  scale  of 
military  precedence  made  him,  ipso  facto,  principal  in 
command  over  the  colonel  of  a  regiment. 

To  the  same  conclusion  we  are  brought,  by  a  careful 
review  of  all  the  facts  pertaining  to  the  battle  itself. 
There  appears  to  be  sufficient  evidence  that  General 


204  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

Putnam,  after  his  successful  encounter  sometimes  called 
the  battle  of  Chelsea,  which,  took  place  on  the  27th  of 
May  previous,  and  by  which  he  had  produced  some  stir 
of  sensation  in  the  army,  became  more  impatient  of  a 
state  of  inaction  than  ever,  and  proposed  himself,  in  the 
council  of  war,  that  they  should  take  up  this  advanced 
position  on  Bunker  Hill.  Prescott  was  in  favor  of  the 
movement,  but  General  Ward  and  others,  including 
even  Gen.  Warren,  a  member  of  the  Council  of  Safety, 
were  opposed ;  regarding  the  attempt  as  being  too  haz 
ardous  in  itself,  and  one  that  would  endanger  the  main 
position  at  Cambridge.  Besides,  what  probably  had 
quite  as  much  influence,  they  distrusted  the  spirit  of 
the  troops,  still  raw  in  discipline;  doubting  whether 
they  would  come  to  the  point  of  an  open,  pitched  battle 
with  the  king  and  stand  their  ground.  They  had  the 
same  feeling  that  Washington  had,  when  he  enquired, 
after  the  battle — "Could  they  stand  fire?"  and  when 
the  answer  was  given,  replied — "the  cause  is  safe!" 
Putnam  believed  they  would  stand  fire  beforehand, 
urging  the  necessity  of  action  to  bring  out  the  spirit 
that  was  in  them  and  confirm  it.  Give  them  a  good 
breastwork  on  the  hill,  he  said,  and  they  will  hold  it. 
"  They  are  not  afraid  of  their  heads,  though  very  much 
afraid  of  their  legs ;  if  you  cover  these  they  will  fight 
forever."  Warren,  who  was  pacing  the  room,  paused 
over  a  chair,  and  said,  "Almost  thou  persuadest  me, 
Putnam.  Still,  I  think  the  project  rash;  but  if  you 
undertake  it,  ['you?  observe,]  you  will  not  be  surprised 
to  find  mo  fit  your  side."  Finally,  ascertaining  that 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  205 

Gen.  Gage  was  about  to  seize  and  occupy  the  same 
ground,  their  hesitation  was  brought  to  an  end. 

It  was  supposed,  in  the  council,  that  "  two  thousand 
men"  would  be  required  to  effect  and  maintain  the 
proposed  occupation.  Accordingly  we  are  to  under 
stand  that,  when  only  a  thousand  were  detailed,  under 
Col.  Prescott,  to  occupy  the  hill  and  open  the  entrench 
ments  on  the  night  of  the  16th,  it  was  expected  that 
other  troops  were  to  be  sent  forward  under  a  more  gen 
eral  command,  when  they  were  wanted.  And  beyond 
a  question  this  command  was  to  be  in  Putnam,  the 
chief  mover  of  the  enterprise.  Accordingly  we  see 
that  Putnam  "went  over  with  the  detachment  under 
Prescott,  and  assisted  in  directing  where  the  entrench 
ment  should  be  opened,  viz.,  on  the  lower  summit,  or 
part  of  Bunker  Hill,  nearest  to  the  city,  afterwards 
called  Breed's  Hill;  in  the  understanding  that  the 
higher  eminence  should  be  taken  afterwards,  when  re 
quired,  and  entrenchments  opened  there.  Putnam  re 
turned  that  night  to  Cambridge,  and  was  back  in  the 
early  dawn  of  the  morning,  as  a  responsible  officer 
should  be,  to  see  the  condition  of  the  works.  At  ten 
o'clock  he  was  in  the  field  again.  And  as  soon  as  it 
became  evident  that  there  was  to  be  an  assault  upon 
the  works,  he  ordered  on  the  Connecticut  troops,  by 
the  consent  of  General  Ward,  and  was  there,  on  the 
field,  at  the  beginning  of  the  engagement.  Leaving 
Prescott,  of  course,  to  his  position,  which  he  had  sim 
ply  to  maintain,  we  see  him  beginning  entrenchments 
on  the  other  summit;  directing  the  detachments  to 

18 


206  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

their  places;  present  everywhere  rebuking  and  rally 
ing  the  timid;  watching  every  turn,  rushing  to  every 
point  of  danger;  seizing  on  a  cannon,  which  it  was 
said,  could  not  be  loaded,  and  even  loading  and  firing 
it  himself;  maintaining  thus,  with  desperate  energy, 
the  left  wing  which  Lord  Howe  was  constantly  endeav 
oring  to  carry,  and  the  yielding  of  which  would,  at  any 
moment,  have  ended  the  struggle  of  Prescott  on  the 
hill ;  saving  also,  by  his  firmness  here,  the  retreat  of 
Prescott  from  being  only  a  slaughter  or  a  capture ;  last 
in  the  retreat  himself,  trying  to  rally  for  a  stand  upon 
the  other  hill,  and  only  not  endeavoring  to  maintain 
the  post  in  his  own  person ;  then  withdrawing  and,  of 
his  own  counsel,  mounting  Prospect  Hill  with  the  Con 
necticut  forces,  opening  his  entrenchments  there  in  the 
night,  and  holding  it  as  a  position  between  the  enemy 
and  Cambridge;  a  movement  by  which  he  probably 
saved  the  town  and  the  public  stores  of  the  army ;  for 
when  the  enemy  saw  his  works  there  the  next  morning, 
they  had  no  courage  left  to  try  a  second  day,  against  a 
position  so  admirably  chosen — a  position  in  which  he 
was  afterwards  installed,  by  Washington,  to  maintain 
the  honors  of  the  center  of  the  army. 

There  was  little  reason,  as  we  have  seen,  for  Putnam 
to  be  multiplying  orders  to  Prescott ;  the  only  thing  to 
be  done  was  to  enable  Prescott,  if  possible,  to  hold  his 
position.  But  it  is  in  evidence  that  he  did  order  awa}^ 
the  entrenching  tools,  against  the  judgment  of  Prescott; 
also  that,  when  Warren  came  upon  the  ground,  he  went 
to  Putnam,  as  the  officer  of  direction,  to  ask  where  he 


HISTORICAL     ESTIMATE.  207 

should  go  to  serve  as  a  volunteer,  and  that  Putnam 
sent  him  to  the  redoubt,  to  the  aid  of  Prescott;  also 
that  the  same  order,  in  regard  to  firing,  occasioned  by 
the  shortness  of  their  ammunition,  was  given  every 
where  on  the  field,  as  well  out  of  the  redoubt  as  in  it, 
and  that  Putnam  said  himself  that  he  gave  the  order. 

It  is  very  easy  to  see,  regarding  this  statement  of 
facts,  how  Prescott  should  often  have  been  spoken  of  as 
being  the  chief  in  command  in  this  battle,  and  even 
how  he  should  have  thought  himself  to  be ;  for  he  had 
the  redoubt  in  charge  at  the  beginning,  and  maintained 
the  internal  command  of  it.  He  came  under  a  higher 
command,  only  by  silent  rules  of  military  precedence, 
when  other  forces  were  upon  the  ground ;  of  which  he 
would  hardly  take  note  himself,  so  little  was  he  inter 
fered  with.  Putnam  had  work  enough  without,  in  the 
open  field,  and  was  very  sure  that  Prescott  would  do 
his  part  within.  It  is  only  a  little  remarkable  that  Col. 
Prescott,  when  questioned  by  Mr.  Adams,  at  Philadel 
phia,  in  regard  to  the  battle,  does  not  even  name  Gen. 
Putnam,  as  having  been  upon  the  ground  at  all ;  and 
apparently  had  not  ascertained,  two  months  after  the 
battle,  whether  the  Connecticut  militia,  sent  out  by 
himself,  under  Knowlton,  to  hold  a  position  against  the 
enemy's  right,  had  obeyed  his  orders  or  had  run  away  ! 
And  it  is  even  the  more  remarkable,  that  this  body  of 
men,  assisted  by  the  brave  Capt.  Chester  of  Wethers- 
field,  and  others  whom  Putnam  was  rallying  to  their 
support  during  the  whole  engagement,  had  been  able, 
by  raising  an  extempore  breastwork  of  fence  and  new- 


208  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

mown  grass,  and  defending  it  with  Spartan  fidelity,  to 
save  him  all  the  while  from  being  flanked  and  cut  to 
pieces!  For  upon  just  this  point  Lord  Howe  was  roll 
ing  his  columns,  with  the  greatest  emphasis  of  assault, 
resting  his  main  hope  of  success  on  turning  the  position 
so  gallantly  defended,  and  gaining,  in  this  manner,  the 
other  summit  of  the  hill,  which,  if  he  had  been  able  to 
do,  Prescott  and  his  regiment  would  have  been,  from 
that  moment,  prisoners  of  war.  In  this  view,  it  is  a 
total  mistake  to  look  upon  the  defense  of  the  redoubt, 
brilliant  as  it  was  and  prominent  to  the  eye,  as  the  bat 
tle  of  Bunker  Hill.  The  place  of  extempore  counsel 
and  varying  fortune,  the  hinge  of  the  day,  was  really 
not  there,  but  in  the  open  field ;  and  especially  in  mov 
ing,  there,  raw  bodies  of  troops,  with  any  such  effect  as 
to  maintain  the  critical  point  of  the  engagement. 

The  testimony  of  authorities,  in  respect  to  the  ques 
tion  of  the  chief  command,  you  will  understand,  is  vari 
ous  and  contradictory,  as  it  naturally  would  be.  And 
yet  the  contradiction  is  rather  verbal  than  real ;  for  as 
Prescott  held  the  redoubt,  in  the  manner  described,  it 
would  be  very  natural,  taking  a  more  restricted  view 
of  the  field,  to  speak  of  him  as  chief  in  command; 
though  the  facts  already  recited,  show  most  clearly, 
that  Col.  Swett  gave  the  true  testimony,  when  he  said 
that  Col.  Prescott  "was  ordered  to  proceed  to  Charles- 
town,  Gen.  Putnam  having  the  principal  direction  and 
superintendence  of  the  expedition  concerning  it."  This 
too  was  the  testimony  of  Putnam  himself,  as  the  Rev. 
Josiah  Whitney  testifies,  in  a  note  to  the  funeral  ser- 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  209 

mon  preached  at  Putnam's  death.  He  says,  "  The  de 
tachment  was  first  put  under  the  command  of  Gen. 
Putnam.  With  it  he  took  possession  of  the  hill,  and 
ordered  the  battle  from  the  beginning  to  the  end." 
Does  any  one  imagine  that  Gen.  Putnam  was  a  man  to 
assert  claims  of  honor  that  belonged  to  others?  Far 
more  likely  was  he,  in  the  generosity  of  his  nature,  to 
give  up  such  as  were  properly  his  own. 

The  testimony  of  the  old  Couraiit,  commenting  on 
the  battle,  shortly  after,  corresponds.  "In  the  list  of 
heroes  it  is  needless  to  expatiate  on  the  character  and 
bravery  of  Major  Gen.  Putnam,  whose  capacity  to  form 
and  execute  great  designs,  is  known  through  Europe, 
and  whose  undaunted  courage  and  martial  abilities 
have  raised  him  to  an  incredible  height,  in  the  esteem 
and  friendship  of  his  American  brethren ;  it  is  sufficient 
to  say,  that  he  seems  to  be  inspired  by  God  Almighty 
with  a  military  genius."  Col.  Humphrey,  writing  his 
Life  of  Putnam,  at  Mount  Yernon,  under  the  eye  of 
Washington,  and  the  historian  Botta,  who  also  derives 
his  facts  from  original  sources,  agree  in  representing 
Putnam  as  the  chief  in  command. 

Moreover,  Washington,  when  he  came  upon  the  field 
only  a  few  days  after  the  battle,  with  commissions  from 
the  Congress  appointing  four  Major  Generals,  immedi 
ately  delivered  Putnam  his  commission,  placing  him 
second  in  command  to  himself,  and  reserved  the  three 
others  for  the  further  consideration  of  Congress ;  though 
Putnam's  commission,  placing  him  above  two  very  tal 
ented  officers  of  the  state,  superior  in  rank  to  himself, 

18* 


210  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

had  created  more  complaint  than  either  of  the  others. 
Why  this  remarkable  deference  to  Putnam,  unless  he 
has  been  the  chief  actuating  spirit  in  some  great  suc 
cess?  Why  is  this  signal  honor  conferred  on  Gen. 
Putnam,  when,  if  Col.  Prescott  commanded  in  the  bat 
tle,  the  eyes  of  the  army  and  of  the  public  at  large  are 
centered  on  him  ? — who,  I  believe,  was  never  afterwards 
promoted  at  all. 

I  have  seen,  too,  within  a  very  few  days,  an  original 
engraving  of  Gen.  Putnam,  published  in  England  three 
months  after  the  battle,  which  has  at  the  foot  these 
words, — "  Major  Gen.  Putnam,  of  the  Connecticut  for 
ces,  and  Commander  in  chief  of  the  engagement  on 
Buncker's  Hill,  near  Boston.  Published,  as  the  Act 
directs,  by  C.  Shepherd,  9th  Sept.,  1775."  That  he 
had  the  chief  command  here  assigned  him  I  firmly  be 
lieve  ;  which  if  he  has  lost,  it  has  been  at  least  three 
months  subsequent  to  the  battle ;  and  by  means  that 
often 'discolor  the  truth  of  history.  No!  the  occupa 
tion  of  the  hill  was  emphatically  Putnam's  measure ; 
one  that  truly  represents  the  man.  See  him,  as  he  is 
represented,  in  the  council,  the  march,  the  beginning 
of  the  entrenchment,  the  fight  itself;  present  every 
where,  directing,  cheering  on  the  men,  rallying  all  the 
force  he  can  to  keep  the  difficult  point  of  the  field ;  last  in 
the  retreat,  issuing  grimmed  with  smoke  and  gunpow 
der,  and  seizing,  with  his  force,  another  hill,  there  to 
entrench  again  and  wait  the  fortune  of  another  day — do 
this,  I  say,  and  there  is  but  one  conclusion  for  us  to  re 
ceive,  viz.,  that  Gen.  Putnam  was  the  chief  in  command, 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  211 

the  animating  spirit  of  the  battle.  This  must  be  our 
claim  and  we  must  make  it  understood.  If  the  monu 
ment  on  Bunker  Hill  is  a  worthy  testimony  for  Massa 
chusetts,  we  must  show  that  it  testifies  as  much  also 
for  Connecticut ;  and  I  hope  our  Connecticut  eyes  will 
be  pardoned,  if  we  see  it  tapering  off  into  a  top-stone, 
that  represents  the  little  town  of  Pomfret ! 

I  have  dwelt  the  more  at  length  on  this  question,  be 
cause  we  seem  to  have  lost  our  rights  here,  in  a  trans 
action  that  in  one  view  stands  at  the  head  of  our 
American  history ;  and  yet  more  because  of  the  good  it 
will  do  us  to  reclaim  our  rights.  I  suppose  it  may  well 
enough  be  doubted  whether  Putnam  was  the  ablest  of 
all  great  commanders;  whether,  in  fact,  he  was  the 
general  to  head  what  would  be  called,  in  history,  a 
great  military  campaign.  He  was  a  man  of  action,  in 
spiration,  adventure,  and  he  made  men  feel  as  he  felt. 
"You  seem  to  have  the  faculty,  Sir,"  said  Washington, 
"of  infusing  your  own  spirit."  Nothing  was  more  tru 
ly  distinctive  of  the  man.  His  value  lay  in  the  im 
mense  volume  of  impulse  or  martial  enthusiasm  there 
was  in  him,  and  in  the  fact  that  his  time  was  always 
now.  The  country  wanted  impulse  to  break  silence, 
and  he  was  the  man,  above  all  others  in  the  colonies,  to 
give  that  impulse.  A  more  cautious  man,  probably, 
would  not  have  advised  to  such  an  attempt ;  possibly  a 
wise  man  would  not ;  but  Putnam,  whose  impetuous 
soul  had  only  a  feeble  connection  with  prudence,  or 
with  mere  science,  was  the  man  to  say,  let  us  have  the 
fight  first,  and  settle  the  wisdom  of  it  afterwards.  Pos- 


212  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

sibly  there  is  a  higher  kind  of  generalship ;  but,  I  knov 
not  how  it  is,  when  I  see  how  much  depended  for  our 
country,  at  that  time,  on  a  real  beginning  of  action,  I 
am  ready  for  once,  to  accept  impulse  as  the  truest  coun 
sel,  and  the  fire  of  martial  passion  as  being  only  the  in 
spired  form  o£  prudence. 

I  can  not  give  you  the  details  of  our  military  transac 
tions  in  the  Eevolution.  I  can  only  name  a  few  facts, 
that  will  suffice  to  indicate  the  spirit  and  devotion  of 
our  people.  Connecticut  was  the  second  state  in  the 
Union,  as  regards  the  amount  of  military  force  contrib 
uted  to  the  common  cause.  She  had  twenty -five  regi 
ments  of  militia  and  of  these,  it  is  said,  that  twenty-two 
full  regiments  were  in  actual  service,  out  of  the  state,  at 
one  and  the  same  time,  and  that  the  most  busy  and 
pressing  season  of  the  year;  leaving  the  women  at 
home  to  hoe  their  fields  and  assist  the  boys  and  old 
men  in  gathering  the  harvests.  And  such  a  class  of 
material  has  seldom  been  gathered  into  an  army. 
When  Trumbull  sent  on  fourteen  regiments  to  Wash 
ington,  at  New  York,  he  described  them  as  "  regiments 
of  substantial  farmers."  And  General  Eoot,  as  a  friend 
of  mine  remembers,  declared  that,  in  his  brigade  alone, 
there  came  out  seven  ministers,  as  captains  of  their  own 
congregations.  Among  our  leaders  was  Colonel  Knowl- 
ton,  than  whom  there  was  not  a  more  gallant  officer,  or 
one  more  respected  by  the  commander-in-chief  in  the 
army  of  the  Kevolution.  And  when  he  fell,  in  the  dis 
astrous  day  at  Harlaem,  with  so  many  hundreds  of  the 
sons  of  Connecticut,  Washington  evinced  his  affliction 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  213 

for  the  loss  of  this  favorite  officer,  as  being  the  loss 
most  deplorable  of  all  that  befell  the  cause,  on  that  los 
ing  day.  Among  the  leaders,  too,  were  Parsons,  and 
Spencer,  and  Wooster,  and  "Wolcott,  and  Ledyard,  and, 
last  of  all,  but  not  least  worthy  to  be  named,  though  to 
name  him  should  never  be  necessary  before  a  Connecti 
cut  audience,  that  mournful  flower  of  patriotism,  the 
young  scholar  of  Coventry ;  he  whom  no  service  could 
daunt  that  Washington  desired,  and  who,  when  he  was 
called  to  die  an  ignominious  death,  nobly  said  to  his 
enemies  and  executioners,  that  "his  only  regret  was, 
that  he  had  but  one  life  to  give  for  his  country." 

But  I  must  not  omit  to  speak  of  our  venerable  Gov 
ernor,  the  patriotic  Trumbull,  under  whom  we  acted 
our  part  in  this  eventful  struggle.  He  was  one  of  those 
patient,  true-minded  men,  that  hold  an  even  hand  of 
authority  in  stormy  times,  and  suffer  nothing  to  fall  out 
of  place,  either  by  excess  or  defect  of  service ;  to  whom 
Washington  could  say,  "I  can  not  sufficiently  express 
my  thanks,  not  only  for  your  constant  and  ready  com 
pliance  with  every  request  of  mine,  but  for  your  pru 
dent  forecast,  in  ordering  matters,  so  that  your  force 
has  been  collected  and  put  in  motion  as  soon  as  it  has 
been  demanded."  And  yet  there  like  to  have  been  a. 
fatal  breach  between  them,  at  the  beginning  of  the  war. 
The  British  ships  in  the  Sound  were  threatening  to  land 
on  our  coast,  and  Trumbull  requested  that  a  part  of  the 
troops  he  was  raising  might  remain  to  guard  our  own 
soil.  No  request,  apparently,  could  be  more  reasona 
ble.  Washington  refused  and  ordered  them  all  to 


214  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

Boston.  Trumbull  wrote  him  a  most  punger.c  letter; 
adding,  however,  like  a  true  patriot,  who  see?  che  ne 
cessity  of  subordination  to  all  power  and  effect,  that  he 
will  comply;  "for  it  is  plain  that  such  jealousies  in 
dulged,  however  just,  will  destroy  the  cause."  Noble 
answer !  worthy  to  be  recorded,  as  a  rebuke  to  faction, 
as  long  as  the  republic  lasts !  Washington  immediate 
ly  explained,  the  misunderstanding  was  healed,  and 
from  that  time  forth  he  leaned  upon  Trumbull  as  one 
of  his  chief  supports ;  confident  always  of  this,  that  he 
could  calculate  on  marching  the  whole  state  bodily  just 
where  he  pleased. 

Neither  let  us  forget,  in  this  connection,  what  ap 
pears  to  be  sufficiently  authenticated,  that  our  Trum 
bull  is  no  other  than  the  world-renowned  Brother  Jon 
athan,  accepted  as  the  soubriquet  of  the  United  States 
of  America.  Our  Connecticut  Jonathan  was  to  Wash 
ington  what  the  scripture  Jonathan  was  to  David,  a 
true  friend,  a  counselor  and  stay  of  confidence — Wash 
ington's  brother.  When  he  wanted  honest  counsel  and 
wise,  he  would  say,  "let  us  consult  brother  Jonathan;" 
and  then  afterwards,  partly  from  habit  and  partly  in 
playfulness  of  phrase,  he  would  say  the  same  when  re 
ferring  any  matter  to  the  Congress, — "let  us  consult 
Brother  Jonathan."  And  so  it  fell  out  rightly,  that  as 
Washington  was  called  the  Father  of  his  Country,  so 
lie  named  the  fine  boy,  the  nation,  after  his  brother 
Jonathan — a  good,  solid,  scripture  name,  which,  as  our 
sons  and  daughters  of  the  coming  time  may  speak  it, 
anywhere  between  the  two  oceans,  let  them  remember 


HISTORICAL     ESTIMATE.  215 

honest  old  Connecticut  and  the  faithful  and  true  brother 
she  gave  to  Washington ! 

Considering  the  very  intimate  historic  connection  of 
our  Revolution  with  the  influence  of  the  clergy,  then 
active  instigation  to  it  and  their  constant,  powerful  co 
operation  in  it,  the  transition  we  make  in  passing  from 
our  military  history  to  that  of  the  pulpit  is  by  no 
means  violent.  Only  in  speaking  of  our  great  men 
here  and  our  theologic  standing  generally,  I  must 
speak  in  the  briefest  manner.  No  mean  distinction  is 
it  to  say,  that  the  renowned  theologian,  preacher  and 
philosopher,  Jonathan  Edwards,  was  a  native  of  Con 
necticut,  and  a  graduate  of  Yale  College.  And  though 
the  more  active  part  of  his  life  was  spent  in  Massachu 
setts,  he  retained  his  affinities,  more  especially,  with 
the  churches  and  ministers  of  Connecticut.  I  need  not 
sa}~,  that  there  is  no  American  name  of  higher  repute, 
not  only  among  the  divines,  but  also  among  the  meta 
physicians  both  of  this  country  and  of  Europe.  Dr. 
Dwight  was  born  in  Massachusetts  but  educated  here, 
and  here  was  the  scene  of  his  life.  Besides  these,  hav 
ing  our  Hooker,  and  Davenport,  and  Bellamy,  and 
Smalley,  and  by  a  less  exclusive  property,  our  Hop 
kins,  and  Emmons,  and  Griffin,  all  sons  of  Connecticut, 
we  have  abundant  reason,  I  think,  to  be  satisfied  with 
our  high  eminence  in  the  department  of  theological  lit 
erature  and  pulpit  effect. 

As  regards  our  poets  I  will  only  detain  you  to  say 


216  HISTORICAL     ESTIMATE. 

that,  while  I  am  far  from  thinking  that  everything 
which  beats  time  in  verse  is  poetry,  it  is  yet  something 
that  we  have  our  Trumbull,  and  Hillhouse,  and  Brain- 
ard,  and  Percival,  and  Pierpont,  and  Halleck,  who,  not 
to  speak  of  others  closer  to  our  acquaintance,  have 
written  what  can  never  perish,  while  wit  may  enliven 
men's  hearts,  or  music  and  the  sense  of  beauty  remain. 

Including,  next,  in  our  inventory,  mechanical  inven 
tions,  I  may  say  that  the  great  improvements  in  cotton 
machinery,  by  Gilbert  Brewster,  justify  the  title  some 
times  given  him  of  the  Arkwright  of  our  country. 

The  cotton  gin  of  Whitney  is  a  machine  that,  by  it 
self,  has  doubled  the  productive  power,  and  so  the  val 
ue,  of  the  Southern  half  of  our  country.  If  the  invent 
or  had  been  paid  for  his  invention,  and  not  defrauded 
of  his  rights  by  a  conspiracy  too  strong  for  the  laws, 
the  interest  of  his  money  would  redeem  all  the  fugi 
tives  that  cross  the  line  of  free  labor,  as  long  as  there  is 
such  a  line  to  cross. 

The  first  two  printing  presses  patented  in  the  United 
States  were  from  Hartford. 

John  Fitch  of  Connecticut  has  the  distinguished  hon 
or  of  producing  the  first  steamboat  that  ever  moved 
upon  the  waters  of  the  world.  He  was  unfortunate  in 
his  character,  though  a  man  of  genius  and  high  enthu 
siasm.  Failing  of  the  means  necessary  to  complete  his 
experiments,  and  universally  derided  by  the  public,  he 
persisted  in  the  Confidence  that  steam  was  to  be  the 
great  agent  of  river  navigation  in  the  world,  and  gave 


HISTORICAL     ESTIMATE.  217 

it,  as  a  last  request,  that  "his  body  might  be  buried  on  the 
banks  of  the  Ohio,  where  his  rest  would  be  soothed  by 
the  blowing  of  the  steam  and  the  splash  of  the  waters." 
It  is  not  as  generally  known,  I  believe,  that  the  first 
steam  locomotive,  ever  constructed,  was  run  in  the 
streets  of  Hartford.  The  inventor  was  Doctor  Kinsley, 
a  man  whose  history  was  strikingly  similar  to  that  of 
Fitch.  The  late  Theodore  Dwight,  known  to  many  in 
this  audience,  lent  him  the  money  with  which  he  made 
his  experiments.  He  succeeded  in  part,  but  fell  through 
into  bankruptcy,  at  the  end,  still  persisting  that  steam 
was  to  be  the  agent  of  the  la"nd  travel  of  the  world. 
His  experiments  were  made  between  the  years  '97  and 
'9,  previous  to  the  introduction  of  rails  as  the  guides 
and  supports  of  motion. 

It  now  remains  to  speak  of  the  rank  we  have  held, 
in  the  matter  of  education,  and  the  power  we  have  ex 
erted  by  that  means,  in  the  republic.  It  is  remarkable 
that  a  very  large  share  of  the  colleges  in  our  nation 
draw  their  lineage,  not  from  Harvard,  most  distinguish 
ed  in  the  fruits  of  elegant  literature,  but  from  Yale. 
This  is  true  of  Dartmouth,  Princeton,  Williams,  Mid- 
dlebury,  Hamilton,  Western  Keserve,  Jacksonville,  and 
Athens  University  in  Georgia.  These  institutions  were 
some  of  them  planned  in  Connecticut,  others  of  them 
moved,  or  in  some  principal  degree  manned,  by  the 
graduates  of  Yale  College  and  sons  of  Connecticut. 
Dr.  Johnson  of  Stratford,  a  graduate  of  Yale  and  after 
wards  of  Oxford,  was  the  principal  originator  and  first 

19 


218  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

President  also  of  Columbia  College,  New  York.  I  find 
in  the  office  of  our  Secretary  of  State  a  petition  to  our 
Legislature  from  the  Trustees  of  Princeton  College,  ask 
ing  leave  to  draw  a  lottery  here  for  the  benefit  of  their 
institution,  such  leave  being  denied  them  by  their  own 
state.  They  aver  in  their  petition,  that  "  it  would  be  a 
happy  means  of  establishing  and  perpetuating  a  desira 
ble  harmony  between  the  two  institutions,  Yale  and 
Princeton,  which  it  will  be  the  care  of  your  petitioners 
to  promote  and  preserve."  Leave  was  granted ;  for  it 
was  the  manner  of  our  state  to  seize  every  opportunity, 
in  every  place,  for  the  Assistance  of  learning.  I  may 
also  add,  that  Mr.  Crary,  to  whose  active  exertions  in 
behalf  of  education  the  school  system  and  the  State 
University  of  Michigan  are  mainly  due,  is  a  son  of 
Connecticut  and  a  graduate  of  Trinity  College. 

Our  system  of  common  schools,  originated  by  a  pub 
lic  statute  which  is  one  of  the  very  first  statutes  passed 
by  the  colonial  Legislature,  and  faithfully  maintained 
down  to  within  the  past  twenty  years,  was,  till  then, 
acknowledged  to  be  far  in  advance  of  that  of  any  other 
state.  The  founding  of  our  school  fund,  too,  is  an  act 
that  used  to  be  regarded  and  spoken  of  with  admiration 
everywhere,  as  characteristic  of  the  state. 

And  now,  if  you  will  see  what  force  there  is  in  edu 
cation,  what  precedence  it  gives  and  preponderance  of 
weight,  even  to  a  small  and  otherwise  insignificant 
state,  you  have  only  to  see  what  Connecticut  has  effect 
ed  through  the  medium  of  her  older  college  and  her 
once  comparatively  vigorous  system  of  common  schools. 


HISTOEICAL    ESTIMATE.  219 

I  have  spoken  of  the  numerous  colleges  dotting  the 
map  of  the  republic,  which  are  seen  to  be  more  or  less 
directly  off-shoots  of  Yale.  If  you  ask  what  parts  of 
the  republic  were  settled  principally  by  emigrations 
from  Connecticut,  they  are  the  Eastern  part  of  Long 
Island,  the  Northern  half  of  New  Jersey,  the  Western 
sections  of  Massachusetts  and  Vermont,  Middle  and 
Western  New  York,  the  Susquehanna  valley  in  Penn 
sylvania,  and  the  Western  Eeserve  territory  in  Ohio — 
just  those  portions  of  our  country,  more  recently  set 
tled,  as  you  will  perceive,  that  are  most  distinguished 
for  industry,  thrift,  intelligence,  good  morals  and  char 
acter. 

Again,  if  you  enter  into  the  legislative  bodies  of 
other  states  west  of  us,  and  ask  who  are  the  members, 
you  will  find  the  sons  of  Connecticut  among  them,  in  a 
large  proportion  of  numbers  compared  with  those  of 
any  other  state.  In  the  convention,  for  example,  that 
revised  the  Constitution  of  New  York  in  1821,  it  was 
found  that,  out  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-six  mem 
bers,  thirty-two  were  natives  of  Connecticut,  not  in 
cluding  those  who  were  bom  of  a  Connecticut  par 
entage  in  that  state.  Of  the  sons  of  Massachusetts 
which,  according  to  the  ratio  of  population,  ought  to 
have  had  about  seventy,  there  were  only  nine.  If  you 
add  to  the  thirty-two  natives  of  Connecticut,  in  that 
body,  her  descendants  born  in  New  York,  and  those  who 
came  in  through  Vermont,  New  Jersey,  and  other 
states,  it  is  altogether  probable  that  they  would  be 
found  to  compose  a  majority  of  the  body;  presenting 


220  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

the  very  interesting  fact  that  Connecticut  is  found  sit 
ting  there,  to  make  a  Constitution  for  the  great  state  of 
New  York.  I  found,  on  inquiry,  four  or  five  winters 
ago,  that  the  New  York  Legislature  contained  fifteen 
natives  of  Connecticut,  while  of  Massachusetts  there 
were  only  nine ;  though,  according  to  her  ratio  of  num 
bers,  there  should  have  been  about  forty.  So  also  in 
the  Ohio  Legislature  of  1838-9,  there  were  found  in  the 
lower  house  of  seventy-four  members,  twelve  from 
Connecticut,  two  from  Massachusetts,  two  from  Ver 
mont. 

If  we  repair  to  the  Halls  of  the  American  Congress, 
we  shall  there  discover  what  Connecticut  is  doing  on  a 
still  larger  scale  of  comparison.  The  late  Hon.  James 
Hillhouse,  when  he  was  in  Congress,  ascertained  that 
forty-seven  of  the  members,  or  about  one-fifth  of  the 
whole  number  in  both  Houses,  were  native  born  sons 
of  Connecticut.  Mr.  Calhoun  assured  one  of  our  Rep 
resentatives,  when  upon  the  floor  of  the  House  with 
him,  that  he  had  seen  the  time  when  the  natives  of 
Connecticut,  together  with  all  the  graduates  of  Yale 
College  there  collected,  wanted  only  five  of  being  a  ma 
jority  of  that  body.  I  took  some  pains  in  the  winter, 
I  think,  of  '43,  to  ascertain  how  the  composition  of  the 
Congress  stood  at  that  time.  There  could  not,  of 
course,  be  as  many  native  citizens  of  Connecticut 
among  the  members,  as  in  the  days  of  Mr.  Hillhouse ; 
but  including  native  citizens  and  descendants  born  out 
of  the  state,  I  found  exactly  his  number,  forty-seven. 
Of  the  New  York  representation,  sixteen,  or  two  fifths, 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  221 

were  sons  or  descendants,  in  the  male  line,  of  Connec 
ticut. 

Saying  nothing  of  descendants  born  out  of  the  state, 
there  were,  at  that  time,  eighteen  native  born  sons  of 
Connecticut  in  the  Congress.  According  to  the  Blue 
Book,  Massachusetts  had  seventeen ;  when  taken  in  the 
proportion  of  numbers  she  should  have  had  forty-two. 
New  Hampshire  should  have  had  eighteen  also,  but 
had  only  seven ;  Vermont  eighteen,  but  had  only  four ; 
Louisiana  eighteen,  but  had  only  two;  New  Jersey 
twenty-one,  but  had  only  nine.  I  see  no  way  to  ac 
count  for  these  facts,  especially  when  the  comparison  is 
taken  between  Connecticut  and  Massachusetts,  unless  it 
be  that,  prior  to  a  time  quite  recent,  our  school  system 
was  farther  advanced  and  the  education  imparted  to 
our  youth  more  universal  and  more  perfect. 

How  beautiful  is  the  attitude  of  our  little  state,  when 
seen  through  the  medium  of  facts  like  these.  Unable 
to  carry  weight  by  numbers,  she  is  seen  marching  out 
her  sons  to  conquer  other  posts  of  influence  and  repre 
sent  her  honor  in  other  fields  of  action.  Which,  if  she 
continues  to  do,  if  she  takes  the  past  simply  as  a  begin 
ning,  and  returns  to  that  beginning  with  a  fixed  de 
termination  to  make  it  simply  the  germ  of  a  higher  and 
more  perfect  culture,  there  need  scarcely  be  a  limit  to 
the  power  she  may  exert,  as  a  member  of  the  republic. 
The  smallness  of  our  territory  is  an  advantage  even,  as 
regards  the  highest  form  of  social  development  and  the 
most  abundant  fruits  of  genius.  Our  state,  under  a 
skillful  and  sufficient  agriculture,  with  a  proper  im- 


222  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE 

provement  of  our  waterfalls,  is  capable  of  sustaining  a 
million  of  people,  in  a  condition  of  competence  and 
social  ornament ;  and  that  is  a  number  as  large  as  any 
state  government  can  manage  with  the  highest  effect. 
No  part  of  our  country  between  the  two  oceans  is  sus 
ceptible  of  greater  external  beauty.  What  now  looks 
rough  and  forbidding  in  our  jagged  hill-sides  and  our 
raw  beginnings  of  culture,  will  be  softened,  in  the  fu 
ture  landscape,  to  an  ornamental  rock-work,  skirted  by 
fertility,  pressing  out  in  the  cheeks  of  the  green  dells 
where  the  farm-houses  are  nested,  bursting  up  through 
the  waving  slopes  of  the  meadows,  and  walling  the 
horizon  about  with  wooded  hills  of  rock  and  pastured 
summits.  We  have  pure,  transparent  waters,  a  clear, 
bell-toned  atmosphere,  and,  withal,  a  robust,  healthy- 
minded  stock  of  people,  uncorrupted  by  luxury,  un- 
humiliated  by  superstition,  sharpened  by  good  necessi 
ties,  industrious  in  their  habits,  simple  in  their  manners 
and  tastes,  rigid  in  their  morals  and  principles ;  com 
bining,  in  short,  all  the  higher  possibilities  of  character 
and  genius,  in  a  degree  that  will  seldom  be  exceeded  in 
any  people  of  the  world.  These  are  the  mines,  the 
golden  placers  of  Connecticut.  Turning  now  to  these 
as  our  principal  hope  for  the  future,  let  us  endeavor, 
with  a  fixed  and  resolute  concentration  of  our  public 
aim,  to  keep  the  creative  school-house  in  action,  and 
raise  our  institutions  of  learning  to  the  highest  pitch  of 
excellence. 

I  am  far  from  thinking  that  our  schools  have  ever 
been  as  low,  or  inefficient,  as  many  have  supposed ;  the 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  223 

facts  I  have  recited  clearly  show  the  contrary.  And 
yet  they  certainly  are  not  worthy  of  our  high  advan 
tages,  or  the  age  of  improvement  in  which  we  live. 
Therefore  I  rejoice  that  our  lethargy  is  now  finally 
broken,  and  that  we  are  fairly  embarked  in  an  organ 
ized  plan  for  the  raising  of  our  schools  to  a  pitch  of  cul 
ture  and  perfection,  worthy  of  our  former  precedence. 

To  exhibit  the  kind  of  expectation  we  are  to  set  be 
fore  Connecticut  as  a  state,  let  me  give  you  the  picture 
of  a  little  obscure  parish  in  Litchfield  county;  and  I 
hope  you  will  pardon  me  if  I  do  it,  as  I  must,  with  a 
degree  of  personal  satisfaction ;  for  it  is  not  any  very 
bad  vice  in  a  son  to  be  satisfied  with  his  parentage. 
This  little  parish  is  made  up  of  the  corners  of  three 
towns,  and  the  ragged  ends  and  corners  of  twice  as 
many  mountains  and  stony-sided  hills.  But  this  rough, 
wild  region,  bears  a  race  of  healthy -minded,  healthy- 
bodied,  industrious  and  religious  people.  They  love  to 
educate  their  sons  and  God  gives  them  their  reward. 
Out  of  this  little,  obscure  nook  among  the  mountains, 
have  come  forth  two  presidents  of  colleges,  the  two  that 
a  few  years  ago  presided,  at  the  same  time,  over  the 
two  institutions,  Yale  and  Washington.  Besides  these 
they  have  furnished  a  Secretary  of  State  for  the  com 
monwealth,  during  a  quarter  of  a  century  or  more. 
Also  a  Solicitor,  commonly  known  as  the  Cato  of  the 
United  States  treasury.  Also  a  member  of  Congress. 
Also  a  distinguished  professor.  And  besides  these  a 
greater  number  of  lawyers,  physicians,  preachers  and 
teachers,  both  male  and  female,  than  I  am  now  able  to 


224  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

enumerate.  Probably  some  of  you  have  never  so  much 
as  heard  the  name  of  this  little  bye-place  on  the  map  of 
Connecticut,  generally  it  is  not  on  the  maps  at  all,  but 
how  many  cities  are  there  of  20,000  inhabitants  in  our 
country,  that  have  not  exerted  one-half  the  influence  on 
mankind.  The  power  of  this  little  parish,  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say,  is  felt  in  every  part  of  our  great  nation. 
Eecognized,  of  course,  it  is  not ;  but  still  it  is  felt. 

This,  now,  is  the  kind  of  power  in  which  Connecticut 
is  to  have  her  name  and  greatness.  This,  in  small,  is 
what  Connecticut  should  be.  She  is  to  find  her  first 
and  noblest  interest,  apart  from  religion,  in  the  full  and 
perfect  education  of  her  sons  and  daughters.  And  so 
she  is  to  be  sending  out  her  youth,  empowered  in  ca 
pacity  and  fortified  by  virtue,  to  take  their  posts  of 
honor  and  influence  in  the  other  states ;  in  her  behalf 
to  be  their  physicians  and  ministers  of  religion,  their 
professors  and  lawyers,  their  wise  senators,  their  great 
orators  and  incorruptible  judges,  bulwarks  of  virtue, 
truth  and  order  to  the  republic,  in  all  coming  time. 
And  then,  when  the  vast  area  of  our  country  between 
the  two  oceans  is  filled  with  a  teeming  population, 
when  the  delegates  of  sixty  or  a  hundred  states,  from 
the  granite  shores  of  the  East,  and  the  alluvial  plains 
of  the  South,  and  the  golden  mountains  of  the  West, 
are  assembled  in  the  Halls  of  our  Congress,  and  little 
Connecticut  is  there  represented,  in  her  own  behalf,  by 
her  one  delegate,  it  will  still  and  always  be  found  that 
she  is  numerously  represented  also  by  her  sons  from 
other  states,  and  her  one  delegate  shall  be  himself  re 


HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE.  225 

garded,  in  his  person,  as  the  symbol  of  that  true 
Brother  Jonathan,  whose  name  still  designates  the 
great  republic  of  the  _world. 

Meantime,  if  any  son  of  Connecticut  will  indulge  in 
the  degraded  sneer,  by  which  ignorant  and  malicious 
custom  has  learned  to  insult  her  name,  let  him  be 
looked  upon  as  the  man  who  is  able  to  please  himself 
in  defiling  the  ashes  of  his  mother.  Let  me  testify  my 
hearty  joy  too,  in  the  presence  of  this  assembly,  that  a 
citizen  of  Connecticut  has  at  last  been  heard  in  the 
Senate  of  this  great  nation,  doing  honor  to  its  noble 
history,  by  a  fit  chastisement  of  the  insult,  which  a  vol 
unteer  malice,  emboldened  by  former  impunity,  was 
tempted  again  to  offer  to  our  commonwealth. 

Fellow-citizens,  I  have  endeavored,  this  evening,  to 
show  you  Connecticut — what  she  has  been,  and  so  what 
she  is  and  ought  to  be.  I  undertook  this  subject, 
simply  because  of  the  chilling  and  depressing  influence 
I  have  so  often  experienced  from  the  want  of  any  suf 
ficient  public  feeling  in  our  state.  I  am  not  a  historian, 
and  I  may  have  fallen  into  some  mistakes,  which  a 
critic  in  American  history  will  detect.  I  knew  but  im 
perfectly,  when  I  began,  how  great  a  wealth  of  char 
acter  and  incident  our  history  contains.  I  supposed  it 
might  be  more  defective  than  I  could  wish,  as  regards 
the  kind  of  material  most  fitted  to  inspire  a  public  en 
thusiasm.  But,  as  I  proceeded  patiently  in  my  ques 
tions,  gathering,  stage  by  stage,  this  inventory,  which 
I  have  condensed  even  to  dry  ness,  I  began  to  be  morti 
fied  by  the  discovery  that  the  age  of  Connecticut  his- 


226  HISTORICAL    ESTIMATE. 

tory  most  defective  and  least  worthy  of  respect  is  the 
present — that  we  are  most  to  be  honored  in  that  which 
we  have  forgot,  and  least  because  we  have  forgotten  it. 
Such,  I  say,  is  Connecticut !  There  is  no  outburst 
of  splendor  in  her  history,  no  glaring  or  obtrusive 
prominence  to  attract  the  applause  of  the  multitude. 
Her  true  merit  and  position  are  discovered  only  by 
search,  she  is  seen  only  through  the  sacred  veil  of  mod 
esty — great,  only,  in  the  silent  energy  of  worth  and  be 
neficence.  But  when  she  is  brought  forth  out  of  her 
retirement,  instead  of  the  little,  declining,  undistin 
guished,  scarcely  distinguishable  State  of  Connecticut, 
you  behold,  rising  to  view,  a  history  of  practical  great 
ness  and  true  honor;  illustrious  in  its  beginning;  se 
rious  and  faithful  in  its  progress;  dispensing  intelli 
gence,  without  the  rewards  of  fame;  heroic  for  the 
right,  instigated  by  no  hope  of  applause ;  independent, 
as  not  knowing  how  to  be  otherwise;  adorned  with 
names  of  wisdom  and  greatness,  fit  to  be  revered  as 
long  as  true  excellence  may  have  a  place  in  the  rever 
ence  of  mankind. 


VI. 

AGRICULTURE  AT  THE  EAST.* 


GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  SOCIETY: 

You  have  thrown  it  upon  me,  at  a  late  hour,  to  pre 
pare  your  Annual  Address.  Exhausted  in  strength 
and  spirits,  by  the  pressure  of  manifold  duties,  and  de 
siring  rather  to  be  eased  of  my  burdens,  than  to  suffer 
the  accumulation  of  new  ones,  I  should  scarcely  have 
listened  to  your  call,  had  it  not  suggested  early  scenes, 
which  it  is  a  kind  of  recreation  to  remember.  It  re 
minded  me  of  the  country  and  the  simple  life  of  the 
fields,  the  plow  and  the  team,  the  digging  of  rocks  and 
the  piling  of  stone  walls,  the  green  thickets  of  maize 
and  the  scented  hay,  the  sounding  flail  of  winter  and 
the  ringing  of  the  ax  in  the  frosty  woods,  —  days  of  vic- 
toriou-s  health,  sound  digestion,  peaceful  sleep,  and 
youthful  spirits  buoyant  as  the  wing  of  the  bird  and 
fresh  as  their  morning  song.  Thus  I  was  tempted  to 
look  upon  the  preparation  of  your  Address  as  a  kind 
of  excursion  into  the  country.  In  which  hope,  if  I  am 
disappointed,  I  shall,  at  least,  have  endeavored  to 

*  Delivered  as  an  Address  before  the  Hartford  County  Agricultural  So 
ciety,  Oct.  2,  1846. 


228  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 


^  in  what  manner  I  was  able,  some  of  the  pleasant 
obligations  I  owe  to  the  country  ;  the  lessons  of  cheer 
ful  industry  there  received;  the  sense  there  acquired, 
amid  the  small  detail  of  rural  economy,  of  what  it  is  to 
live;  the  acquaintance  made  with  nature,  by  a  thor 
ough  contact  with  her  in  all  her  moods  and  objects  ; 
and,  more  than  all,  the  worth  of  enjoyments  that  spring 
from  the  ingenuous  performance  of  life's  simple  duties. 

I  shall  not  undertake,  on  the  present  occasion,  to  in 
struct  you,  either  in  the  science  or  in  the  practical 
methods  of  agriculture.  I  rather  prefer  to  occupy  you 
with  a  subject  which  is  more  within  my  compass  —  a 
more  general  subject,  though  one  that  is  intimately 
connected  with  our  agricultural  prosperity,  and  one 
which,  through  that,  deeply  concerns  the  common  in 
terest  of  us  all. 

The  agriculture  of  our  State,  though  improving,  is 
still  very  crude  and  imperfect.  An  impression  prevails 
among  us  that  agriculture  can  not  here  become  a  hope 
ful  and  profitable  interest.  Land  is  thought  to  be  dear, 
in  proportion  to  its  value  ;  the  soil  is  much  of  it  poor 
and  untractable  ;  and  the  sky  is  harsh  and  repulsive. 
Hence  our  young  men,  together  with  many  enterprising 
families  in  middle  life,  are  tempted  to  relinquish  the 
ties  that  bind  them  here  and  go  out  to  seek  their  for 
tune  in  the  new  world  of  the  west.  To  stay  here  and 
delve  among  the  snows  and  rocks  and  worn-out,  sour, 
old  fields  of  Connecticut,  is  supposed  to  indicate  a  de 
gree  of  verdancy,  or,  at  least,  a  want  of  manly  determ 
ination,  not  altogether  worthy  of  respect.  Accordingly, 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  229 

we  find  that  our  population  scarcely  increases,  and  the 
census  roll  of  1840  shows  that,  in  some  parts  of  the 
State,  it  has  even  begun  to  difninish.  The  tone  of 
public  spirit  droops  accordingly,  the  prices  of  property 
are  depressed,  and  all  the  substantial  interests  of  society 
are  held  in  check.  "We  seem  even  to  have  it  in  ques 
tion  in  our  hearts,  whether,  at  some  future  day,  when 
the  Paradise  of  the  west  is  beginning  to  be  set  in  order, 
the  people  of  old  Connecticut  will  not  adjourn  bodily 
and  go  clear,  leaving  its  bleak  hills  and  flinty  fields  to 
themselves. 

In  what  I  may  say  on  this  subject,  I  wish  not  to  be 
understood  as  desiring  utterly  to  stop  the  emigration  of 
our  people.  If  they  are  a  loss  to  us,  they  are  yet  a  gain 
to  other  parts  of  our  great  nation,  which  needs  them 
quite  as  much  as  we.  In  just  this  way  has  ou^r  State 
already  bestowed  upon  the  rising  States  of  the  west 
some  of  the  best  blessings  they  have  received — men  of 
industry,  order,  education  and  piety,  who  have  assisted 
in  laying  the  foundations  of  all  that  is  good  and  hopeful 
in  their  newly  constructed  institutions.  We  can  not 
regret  these,  our  kindred,  as  lost ;  they  are  our  pride 
rather,  and  we  hope  that  others  of  our  sons  and  daugh 
ters  will  go  forth  to  do  us  honor  in  the  same  way.  At 
the  same  time,  it  is  my  earnest  conviction  that  the  west 
ward  tendency  of  our  population  is  extravagant,  so  ex 
travagant  as  even  to  amount  to  a  serious  delusion. 
There  are  commonly  no  such  advantages  to  be  gained 
by  removal  as  are  anticipated.  Meantime  we  are  pre 
vented,  by  the  same  delusion,  from  realizing  here  that 

20 


230  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

spectacle  of  social  beauty  and  maturity  which  is  needed, 
above  all  things,  to  serve  as  an  ideal  to  the  nation  at 
large,  and  thus  as  a  stimulant  to  its  moral  and  physical 
advancement. 

What  I  propose,  therefore,  is  to  enter  into  the  ques 
tion  of  agriculture  as  a  New  England  interest.  My 
conviction  is,  and  I  hope  to  produce  the  same  in  you, 
that  in  ordinary  cases  you  may  much  better  stay  here 
and  retain  your  families  about  you,  multiplying  your 
farms  in  number  as  the  hands  and  mouths  are  multi 
plied,  reducing  them  in  size  as  they  are  multiplied  in 
number,  and  enriching  their  quality  as  they  are  di 
minished  in  size.  In  other  words,  emigration  to  the 
west,  as  it  now  prevails,  is  bad  economy.  You  will 
incur  greater  hardships,  enjoy  fewer  comforts,  and  ad 
vance  i|i  property  with  more  difficulty  and  greater  un 
certainty  there  than  here. 

In  presenting  the  merits  of  this  question,  something 
requires  to  be  said  concerning  the  comparative  natural 
advantages  of  agriculture  here  and  at  the  west,  those 
especially  which  belong  to  the  climate  and  the  soil. 

Our  climate  is  more  sharp  and  rugged,  but  not  less 
healthy,  and  health  is  the  first  article  of  physical  pros 
perity,  as  well  as  of  physical  enjoyment.  If  our 
changes  are  abrupt,  if  our  extremes  of  heat  and  cold 
are  severe,  our  air  is  pure  and  vigorous  beyond  that  of 
almost  any  other  country  in  the  world.  A  softer  cli 
mate,  too,  makes  softer  men,  men  of  a  lower  physical 
tone  and  a  less  triumphant  energy.  So  a  moister  cli 
mate,  like  that  of  England,  makes  a  rounder  and  more 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  231 

full-blooded  race,  but  fullness  of  moisture  and  a  fair 
skin  are  no  signs  of  muscular  spring,  and  clear,  elastic, 
temperament.  A  New  England  farmer,  swinging  his 
scythe  under  a  July  sun,  and  foddering  his  cattle  on  a 
snow-bank,  has  a  good  climate  enough  for  him,  because 
he  has  a  body  and  mind  that  are  tough  enough  for  all 
weather.  What  matter  is  it  to  him  how  the  thermom 
eter  ranges,  when  he  has  a  spring  thermometer  in  his 
body,  which  tempers  all  extremes  and  keeps  up  the 
equilibrium  of  his  physical  enjoyment.  He  belongs  to 
a  fire-king,  snow-king  race,  and  brought  up  in  fire  and 
snow,  he  is  at  home  in  both  elements,  happy  in  the 
royal  vigor  of  his  bodily  prerogative.  Some,  I  know, 
are  falling  into  the  habit  of  railing  at  our  sour  and 
changeful  climate.  But  from  what  I  have  seen  of  the 
temperament  of  milder  countries  and  the  milder  vigor 
of  their  people,  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  we 
have  about  the  most  respectable  climate  in  the  world. 
It  is  true  that  we  all  die,  and  some  are  ready  to  con 
clude  that,  as  one  disease  or  another  is  certainly  de 
termined  to  kill  us  and  will  not  let  us  be  excused,  that 
there  must  be  some  intolerable  fault  in  the  climate. 
Whereas,  if  they  are  willing  to  look  at  reasonable  evi 
dence,  there  is  no  part  of  the  world  where  the  people 
appear  to  have  such  a  spring  of  elasticity,  such  capacity 
of  endurance,  such  power  of  execution,  and  live,  on  the 
average,  to  so  great  an  age.  If  any  person  or  family 
has  reason  to  dread  the  development  of  hereditary  con 
sumption,  they  may  find  their  advantage,  perhaps,  in 
emigrating  to  the  western  States.  Otherwise,  they  are 


232  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

far  more  likely  to  prolong  their  days,  retain  their  health 
unshaken,  and  multiply  their  physical  enjoyments,  by 
remaining  in  New  England. 

The  soil  of  the  west  is  certainly  richer,  more  feasible 
and  more  fruitful,  naturally,  than  ours.  But  this  ad 
vantage,  which  I  freely  admit,  is  offset  by  three  or  four 
others,  which  more  than  counterbalance  it  in  the  reck 
oning.  Our  country  abounds  in  rapid  streams  and 
waterfalls,  and  is  therefore  destined  by  nature  to  be  a 
great  manufacturing  region — greater  even  than  we,  as 
yet,  begin  to  conceive.  It  will  be  more  populous  than 
any  purely  agricultural  region  can  be.  It  will  abound 
in  large  towns  and  cities,  preparing  markets  for  those 
kinds  of  produce  which  can  not  be  transported  over 
long  distances,  copious  enough  to  consume  all  that  our 
soil  will  yield, — apples  and  all  kinds  of  fruits,  potatoes 
and  other  esculent  roots,  veal,  lamb,  poultry,  and  fresh 
meat  generally,  milk,  butter,  eggs,  hay,  wood, — in  all 
such  articles  we  shall  have  a  market  close  at  hand,  and 
have  it  tq  ourselves,  clear  of  competition.  Our  country, 
too,  is  on  the  sea-board,  and  must,  therefore,  be  the 
market  country  of  the  nation,  as  long  as  it  exists.  For 
about  half  the  year,  too,  the  vast  inland  regions  of  the 
west  are  very  much  excluded  from  this  market.  Mean 
time  we,  always  near  at  hand,  can  watch  the  fluctua 
tions  of  the  market  and  turn  in  our  products,  at  short 
notice,  so  as  to  take  advantage  of  prices.  Doubtless  it 
sounds  very  imposingly  to  us,  when  we  learn  that  a 
friend  in  Illinois  has  raised  so  many  bushels  of  wheat 
to  the  acre,  and  has  had  a  hundred  or  five  hundred 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  233 

acres  in  cultivation ;  but  when  it  is  added  that  he  sold 
it  for  fifty  or  eighty  cents  per  bushel,  carting  it  off  a 
hundred  or  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles,  to  some  lake  or 
river,  at  an  expense  of  twenty-five  cents  a  bushel ;  re 
alizing,  in  clear  profit,  even  less  than  a  quarter  of  the 
income,  per  acre,  which  he  would  have  realized  here, 
on  land  only  moderately  productive,  the  fascination 
seems  a  little  diminished.  Then  you  understand  why 
he  continues  to  live  in  a  log-house,  writes  few  letters, 
postpones  the  visit  to  his  friends  which  he  long  ago 
spoke  of,  and  why,  if  you  visit  him,  which  is  more 
likely,  he  looks  rougher  than  he  used  to  look,  has  a 
want  of  service  in  the  house,  and  a  half  wild  race  of 
children  round  him  waiting  to  be  educated. 

To  offset  the  productiveness  of  the  soil  at  the  west, 
we  have,  too,  another  advantage,  which  no  considerate 
man  will  despise.  I  mean  pure  water — a  plentiful  sup 
ply,  on  almost  every  ten  acres  of  ground,  of  good  pure 
water.  So  many  limpid  brooks  thread  our  valleys,  so 
many  crystal  springs  break  out  of  our  hills,  a  well  of 
moderate  depth  commands  a  fountain  so  clear  and 
abundant,  that  we  scarcely  think  of  water,  as  a  thing 
of  any  value,  least  of  all,  as  a  necessary  convenience  to 
agriculture.  But  you  remove  to  the  west  and  the  first 
thing  you  discover,  probably,  is,  that  you  are  to  spend 
your  life  in  taking  medicine.  The  rich  fields  on  which 
you  locate,  and  out  of  which  your  waving  harvests  are 
to  grow,  are  probably  underlaid  with  lime  juice.  You 
sink  a  well  some  twenty  or  sixty  feet,  and  the  bucket, 
dipping  into  this  liquid  medicine,  draws  it  up  to  be  the 

20* 


234  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

drink  of  your  days.  Your  tea  and  coffee  are  steeped  in 
medicine.  Your  face  and  clothes  are  washed  in  the 
same.  And  when  you  die,  it  will  probably  be  a  fair 
verdict  that  you  died  of  taking  medicine.  Then  having 
probably  no  streams  or  springs  in  your  fields,  which  are 
not  dry  in  the  summer,  you  must  sink  another  well  and 
set  up  a  pump  for  your  cattle.  If  you  are  sick  or  leave 
home,  and  trust  them  in  the  charge  of  a  careless  boy,  or 
a  faithless  man,  they  are  likely  to  be  lowing  in  dismal 
agony  for  your  return.  So  if  you  are  unexpectedly  de 
tained  from  home  yourself.  And  as  a  part  of  your  or 
dinary  labor,  you  must  drive  your  cattle,  at  least  twice 
in  the  day,  to  the  watering-place,  and  spend  a  full  hour 
in  pumping  for  them  a  hogshead  of  the  medicinal  liquid 
just  described;  having  it  for  your  comfort  that  when 
the  poor  herd  look  up  from  the  trough  at  which  they 
drink,  they  will  seem  to  have  it  in  their  faces  to  tell 
you  how  much  better  it  is  to  be  in  a  land  of  rocks  and 
snow-banks,  than  to  dwell  in  a  thirsty  land  where  no 
water  is.  Meantime  if,  in  the  dry  season  of  summer 
and  autumn,  you  descend  to  the  lower  grounds  that 
skirt  the  sluggish  streams,  which,  we  suppose,  you  will 
have  had  the  discretion  to  avoid  in  fixing  your  location, 
there  you  come  upon  a  stagnant,  inky-looking  ditch, 
winding  round  among  the  decayed  trees  and  piles  of 
drift-wood,  no  ripple  of  motion  stirring  the  surface,  no 
sign  of  life  appearing  to  disturb  the  dismal,  deathlike 
silence  of  the  pool.  The  very  frogs  have  gone  ashore 
and  sit  drooping  among  the  reeds,  afraid  to  leap  into 
the  poisonous  element,  and  the  fishes  lie  sick  below. 


AGRICULTUKE    AT    THE    EAST.  235 

The  most  decisive  sign  of  life  you  discover  thereabouts 
is  in  the  ague  shake  of  the  men,  women  and  children, 
who  have  dared  to  pitch  upon  the  rich  bottoms  adja 
cent,  and  whose  harvest,  you  perceive,  is  rotting  down 
in  their  fields  unreaped. 

We  have  also  another  compensation  for  the  deficient 
richness  and  the  intractable  stubbornness  of  our  soil,  in 
the  superior  beauty  of  which  it  is  capable.  Nor  to  any 
thoughtful,  cultivated  man  is  this  a  mean  advantage. 
The  western  country,  though  fertile  as  a  garden  by  na 
ture,  and  capable  of  excelling,  perhaps,  in  productive 
ness,  any  other  portion  of  the  world's  surface,  is  yet,  for 
the  most  part,  a  dull,  monotonous  region,  and  never  can 
be  otherwise.  No  possible  ornament  or  cultivation  can 
ever  give  it  a  picturesque  effect.  Without  hills  and 
waterfalls,  without  foaming  streams,  rocks,  green  dells 
and  sheltered  valleys,  art  can  never  supply  the  defi 
ciency  of  nature.  Traveling  through  a  cleared  region 
of  miles  in  extent,  you  can  see  nothing  but  a  rampart 
of  forest  trees,  which  close  you  in  and  forbid  you  to  see 
farther.  No  mountain  ranges  lift  their  blue  heads, 
marking  a  distant  horizon  round  you.  Indeed  you 
are  continually  haunted  by  the  feeling  that  there  is 
no  horizon,  that  it  has  sunk,  gone  down  with  the 
sun,  some  thousands  of  years  ago,  never  to  rise.  In 
the  vast  prairie  regions,  where  no  woods  impede  the 
view,  the  case  is  even  worse.  There  being  no  elevated 
objects  or  summits  to  impart,  by  changes  of  color,  a 
sense  of  distances,  there  are  no  distances,  and  the  sky 
shuts  down  about  you  so  close  that  you  suspend  your 


286  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

breath  instinctively,  as  one  thinking  of  suffocation. 
And  thus,  instead  of  the  Great  Yalley,  of  which  you 
heard  so  much,  and  which  you  fancied  would  spread 
its  ample  bosom  round  you,  vast  and  magnificent  be 
yond  the  compass  of  all  thought,  you  find  that  you  are, 
in  fact,  living  under  a  bowl  of  sky  scarcely  bigger  than 
your  farm.  Such  is  not  New  England.  We  have 
here  a  country  of  varied  outline,  composed  of  brooks, 
lakes,  cliffs  of  rock,  green  dells  bosomed  among  the 
hills  and  girt  about  by  distant  mountains,  a  country 
naturally  wild  and  rough,  but  capable  of  the  highest 
physical  beauty.  And  this  beauty  it  will  one  day  re 
veal.  I  have  not  one  doubt  that  the  present  feeling  of 
the  nation,  that  which  is  now  turning  all  eyes  west 
ward,  is,  before  many  generations  have  passed  away,  to 
be  wholly  reversed.  The  great  west,  which  is  now  the 
Paradise  of  cheap  land,  will  be  known  as  a  Paradise  no 
longer,  but  rather  as  the  great  American  corn-field,  the 
Poland  of  the  United  States.  New  England,  mean 
time,  will  be  sprinkled  over  with  beautiful  seats  and 
bloom  as  a  cultivated  garden.  The  wooded  hills,  the 
rocky  cliffs,  the  green  slopes  and  waterfalls,  will  be 
wrought  into  a  picture  of  grace  and  loveliness;  the 
longing  heart  of  the  nation  will  be  turning  hither,  and 
men  of  resources  and  cultivated  tastes  will  be  pressing 
eastward  to  seek  a  residence  of  comfort  and  ornament. 
In  short,  there  is  not  the  smallest  room  to  doubt  that, 
taken  in  the  long  run  of  time,  New  England  will  be 
found,  in  its  simple  capacity  of  physical  beauty,  to  be 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  237 

far  more  richly  gifted  by  nature  than  the  richest  re 
gions  of  fertile  monotony  in  the  west. 

I  have  spoken,  thus  far,  simply  of  the  general  natural 
advantages  of  our  country,  as  regards  agriculture,  com- 
•  pared  with  the  new  countries  west  of  us.  On  which 
side  the  balance  lies  I  see  no  room  to  doubt.  But  gen 
eral  considerations  of  this  nature,  though  entitled  to 
great  weight,  are  not  decisive  in  themselves.  Still,  it 
will  be  said,  that  agriculture  is  not  here  a  profitable  in 
terest,  and  that,  with  every  man  seeking  a  livelihood,  is 
the  first  thing.  But  I  am  always  curious  to  know  who 
it  is,  what  kind  of  farmer,  on  what  kind  of  farm,  by 
what  kind  of  cultivation,  that  has  ascertained  the  un 
profitableness  of  agriculture  here.  It  makes  all  the  dif 
ference  possible  who  it  is  that  has  ascertained  such  a 
fact.  For  it  may  be,  after  all,  that  it  is  the  unprofita 
bleness  of  the  man  that  is  proved,  not  the  unprofitable 
ness  of  agriculture.  And  if  I  mistake  not,  there  are 
unprofitable  men  at  the  west  as  well  as  here.  The 
probability  is,  moreover,  that  an  unprofitable  man, 
crossing  the  mountains,  will  be  able  also  to  prove,  both 
there  and  everywhere,  that  agriculture  is  not  a  profita 
ble  interest. 

However  there  is  a  current  impression  or  opinion 
that  agriculture,  in  New  England,  is  not  and  can  not  be 
profitable.  And  some  respect  is  due  to  current  opin 
ions,  though  there  are  many  such,  that  are  mere  saws 
of  the  day,  and  worth  about  as  much  as  the  new  saws 
that  prevail,  every  successive  year,  in  regard  to  medi 
cine.  Our  farmers  scour  over  three  or  four  times  the 


238  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

amount  of  surface  which  they  are  really  able  to  culti 
vate,  wearing  down  land,  teams,  bones  and  patience,  to 
get  a  bare  subsistence,  and  then  declare,  with  a  sigh, 
that  agriculture  here  is  not  profitable ;  they  must  sell 
and  go  to  the  west.  Then  springs  up  a  dilettante,  or 
gentleman  farmer,  who  declares  that  it  is  not  so,  as  he 
will  shortly  prove.  He  buys  a  small  farm,  for  he  has 
some  right  notions,  and  proceeds  to  bring  it  under  cul 
tivation,  on  scientific  principles.  He  gives  orders  to  the 
men  to  make  heaps  of  compost,  that  will  cost  him,  be 
fore  he  gets  through,  at  least  five  dollars  a  load ;  lays 
in  a  stock  of  patent  utensils ;  plants  orchards  that  are 
certainly  to  pay  all  his  expenses  in  five  years;  pur 
chases  a  herd  of  cows  that  are  each  to  give  half  a  barrel 
of  milk  a  day;  sheep  that  will  yield  a  fleece  of  ten 
pounds  every  year,  besides  being  mutton  themselves, 
and  a  choice  breed  of  swine  that  will  almost  fatten 
themselves  on  their  own  reputation,  and  thus  he  begins. 
Then  he  comes  out  of  his  scientific  library,  in  his 
gloves,  to  see  how  the  men  get  on,  and  how  the  old 
worn-out  farm  rejoices  under  his  new  scientific  dispen 
sation.  Or  perhaps  he  is  a  professional  man,  and  only 
goes  out  occasionally  to  observe  the  working  of  his  ex 
periment.  By  and  by  he  begins  to  think  that  his  bills 
come  in  too  fast,  much  faster  than  his  money.  He  goes 
into  a  reckoning,  and  finds,  to  his  great  surprise,  that 
his  farm  has  cost  him  about  a  thousand  dollars  a  year. 
Now  he  also  concludes  that  agriculture  in  New  England 
is  certainly  an  unprofitable  business,  and  the  fact  is 
proved.  The  old  style  farmer  thought  so;  the  new 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  239 

style  farmer  has  made  it  certain.     Henceforth  it  is  an 
established  fact. 

Now  I  have  the  greatest  respect  for  science.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  it  has  added  very  great  assistance  to 
agriculture  already,  and  will,  in  future  times,  add  a 
great  deal  more  than  it  has  done.  Still  it  can  do 
nothing,  separated  from  practical  economy,  personal  in 
dustry,  inspection  and  experience.  Botany,  by  itself, 
will  not  raise  potatoes ;  vegetable  physiology  will  not 
keep  them  from  rotting  after  they  are  raised ;  a  knowl 
edge  of  manures  will  not  enrich  a  farm ;  a  knowledge 
of  soils,  and  the  relations  of  soil  and  climate  to  the 
several  kinds  of  product,  will  not  maintain  good  econ 
omy,  or  make  good  bargains.  The  true  farmer  must 
be  neither  a  mere  theorist,  nor  a  dull-minded  drudge, 
following  in  the  rut  made  by  his  father's  wheels.  While 
he  takes  off  his  coat  and  wipes  the  sweat  from  his  brow, 
he  must  have  his  wits  at  work  too.  He  must  dig 
ditches  and  make  figures.  He  must  throw  out  rocks, 
and  what  is  quite  as  hard,  must  loosen  the  dull  ideas 
that  habit  has  bedded  in  his  brain.  He  must  be  alive 
all  over,  in  body  and  mind,  in  mind  and  body.  There 
is  no  business  so  complex,  requiring  so  much  of  steady, 
well  digested  economy,  so  great  sharpness  of  judgment, 
so  nice  a  balancing  between  theory  and  practice.  Ten 
thousand  chances  are  at  work  about  him,  and  he 
must  have  his  eyes  open  to  them  all, — frosts,  droughts, 
excess  of  water,  good  and  bad  seeds,  insects,  diseases, 
good  successions  of  crops,  good  divisions  of  fields,  ap 
propriate  and  cheap  manures,  the  relative  yield  of  bar- 


240  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

vests,  the  markets, — all  these  and  a  thousand  other  dis 
tinct  matters  he  must  have  in  view,  and  it  requires  a 
mind  full  of  intelligence  and  wide  awake  to  observation, 
to  choose  his  way.  The  time  is  passing  away  when 
farming  at  hap-hazard,  raising  any  thing,  any  how,  any 
where,  can  be  profitable.  The  farmer  of  the  coming 
age  must  be  a  different  style  of  man,  or  he  will  come  to 
naught.  The  future  owners  of  the  United  States,  and 
that  at  no  very  distant  day,  are  likely  to  be  a  class  of 
men  who  understand  agriculture  as  an  art ;  for  just  as 
the  wealth  of  manufactures  is  passing  into  the  hands 
of  the  great  practical  operators,  so  the  lands  will 
pass,  ere  long,  by  the  same  law,  into  the  hands  of 
a  class  who  have  skill  to  manage  them  profitably; 
while  the  mere  drudges,  who  are  now  scrubbing  over 
their  old  dilapidated  farms,  among  rocks  and  brakes 
and  bogs  and  daisies,  will  descend,  as  they  ought,  to 
the  mere  rank  of  day  laborers.  If  there  be  any  class 
of  farmers  among  us,  who  can  not  awake  to  the  neces 
sity  of  improvement,  can  not  understand  that  any  thing 
is  needed  but  to  keep  plowing  and  planting  and  raising 
weeds,  as  their  fathers  did,  I  am  not  sure  that  they  had 
not  better  remove  to  the  west.  The  new  scenes  and 
hard  trials  of  western  life,  and  perhaps  a  good  shake  of 
ague,  will  wake  them  up.  If  not,  if  they  still  adhere 
to  their  old  vegetable  habit,  that  is  certainly  a  better 
place  for  the  spontaneous  vegetable  growths  of  all  sorts 
than  this,  and  will  be  for  at  least  two  or  three  genera 
tions  to  come. 

But  the  young  man  who  has  a  mind  awake,  a  sound 


AGRICULTURE     AT    T II K     EAST.  241 

practical  judgment  in  a  sound  practical  body,  can  do 
better.  If  he  has  slender  means  to  begin  with,  it  does 
not  follow  that  he  must  go  where  land  is  cheapest ;  cer 
tainly  not  if  that  is  the  hardest,  most  uncertain  way  to 
increase  his  means,  as  in  many  cases  it  unquestionably 
is.  Let  him  select  for  purchase  some  small  farm,  of 
only  twenty  or  thirty  acres,  worth  perhaps  thirty  or 
forty  dollars  an  acre,  favorably  situated  for  improve 
ment,  and  of  such  a  description  that  it  is  capable  of 
being  easily  raised  in  value.  On  this  let  him  make  his 
beginning.  There  are  many  such  farms  in  the  market, 
which,  in  five  years,  can  be  made  worth  eighty  or  one 
hundred  dollars  per  acre,  repaying,  meantime,  by  what 
they  produce,  every  expense  incurred.  I  do  not  say 
that  this  can  generally  be  done ;  for  some  kinds  of  land 
are  more  intractable  as  regards  improvement  than 
others.  I  only  say,  that  a  man  of  sharp-lighted  judg 
ment,  assisted  by  science,  will  select  many  such.  For 
the  first  year  or  two,  the  land  will  not  pay  the  expenses 
of  labor  and  manure.  But  the  farther  you  go,  and  the 
more  expense  you  make,  if  wisely  made,  the  better  the 
return  becomes,  till  at  length,  when  the  soil  is  brought 
up  into  the  very  highest  tone  possible,  the  income 
yielded  is  enhanced  in  a  geometrical  ratio ;  for  the 
taxes,  the  expenses  of  cultivation,  harvesting  and 
fencing,  are  scarcely  greater  than  before,  the  new 
manure  falls  into  a  soil  that  is  already  coming  into 
hearty  and  vigorous  action,  and  the  growths  take  their 
spring  from  a  higher  level.  I  doubt  whether  there  is 
any  method  of  increasing  in  property  so  certain  and 

21 


242  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

easy  as  this,  or  any  that  is  more  within  the  bounds  of 
rigid  computation.  So  also  facts  most  abundantly 
prove. 

Thus  an  English  gentleman,  who,  fifty  years  ago, 
received  from  one  of  his  estates  £5,000  a  year,  has  so 
increased  its  productiveness,  by  an  improved  agricul 
ture,  that  he  is  now  receiving  £40,000.  That  is,  he 
has  so  managed  the  estate,  as  to  make  it  eight-fold  its 
own  former  value,  yielding  him,  all  the  time,  a  large 
and  increasing  revenue  for  his  own  expenditure.  Such 
examples  are  frequent  in  England.  The  whole  island, 
taken  as  a  single  estate,  has  nearly  three-folded  its 
power  of  production,  within  the  last  fifty  years.  To  an 
American,  passing  through,  it  appears  to  be  a  vast  cul 
tivated  garden,  clean  of  weeds,  covered  with  luxuriant 
growths,  every  hedge  and  field  in  the  nicest  keeping, 
and  the  highest  state  of  production,  and  yd  I  heard 
them  complaining  in  Parliament  of  their  wretched  and 
slovenly  agriculture,  and  declaring,  without  scruple, 
and  I  have  no  doubt,  with  truth,  that  the  island  is  ca 
pable  of  being  made  to  yield  more  than  double  its 
present  product. 

A  similar  process  is  going  on  in  Prussia.  Yast 
sterile  plains  of  sand,  that  were  considered  worthless  a 
few  years  ago,  are  now  producing  luxuriant  crops  of 
wheat.  A  school-farm  that  cost  two  thousand  dollars, 
was  raised,  in  twelve  years,  to  the  value  of  twelve 
thousand  dollars,  by  nothing  but  an  improved  method 
of  agriculture. 

Similar   facts   are   furnished    in   our    own   country. 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  243 

Two  gentlemen,  in  the  State  of  Delaware,  bought  a  farm, 
at  the  rate  of  thirty  dollars  per  acre.  In  a  few  years, 
the  farm  had  paid  all  their  expenditure,  and  was  found 
producing  a  clear  annual  income,  equal  to  the  interest 
of  $500  per  acre.  A  worn-out  farm,  near  Geneva,  in 
the  State  of  New  York,  was  bought  for  ten  dollars  per 
acre.  At  the  end  of  fifteen  years,  it  was  found  to  have 
supported  a  family,  paid  its  own  expenses,  and  was 
yielding,  for  the  whole  four  hundred  acres,  the  interest 
money  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  per  acre. 

More  conclusive  still,  because  it  is  proof  on  a  larger 
scale,  the  current  price  of  lands  in  Dutchess  county,  New 
York,  was,  twenty  years  ago,  only  twenty  or  twenty- 
five  dollars  per  acre.  They  are  now  selling  currently 
at  one  hundred  and  one  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  per 
acre.  Meantime,  the  lands  of  George  Washington,  for 
merly  valued  at  forty  dollars  per  acre,  are  now  selling 
at  seven  dollars. 

And  if  you  desire  proofs  closer  at  hand,  there  is  a 
farmer  in  our  own  state,  who  will  tell  you  that  he  and 
his  father  used  to  sow  a  hundred  acres  of  rye,  to  get 
one  thousand  bushels  of  the  grain,  which  they  sold,  one 
year,  as  he  recollects,  for  six  hundred  and  twenty-five 
dollars.  The  last  year,  he  sold,  from  six  acres  of  the 
same  land,  products  to  the  amount  of  eight  hundred 
dollars ;  a  sum  equal  to  the  interest  on  two  thousand 
two  hundred  dollars  per  acre.  This  gentleman  began 
with  a  farm  of  five  hundred  acres.  Convinced  that  it 
was  too  large,  he  commenced  selling  it  off,  and  wisely 
reduced  it  to  one  hundred  and  seventy -five  acres,  which 


244  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

now,  with  a  much  smaller  amount  of  labor,  produce  a 
much  larger  income  than  the  whole  five  hundred,  and 
are  also  worth  more  in  the  market.  He  lately  refused 
two  hundred  dollars  per  acre,  for  several  acres  of  land, 
which,  twenty  years  ago,  he  valued  at  forty  dollars. 
Nor  is  the  experience  of  this  gentleman  at  all  singular. 
Others  have  realized  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  the 
same  general  results,  by  a  similar  process.  I  see  no 
reason  why  agriculture  may  not  be  prosecuted  to  ad 
vantage,  on  a  large  scale,  as  well  as  any  other  kind  of 
business.  But  the  care,  labor  and  expenditure  must  be 
proportionate,  in  order  to  carry  forward  the  desired  im 
provement.  For  the  same  treatment,  which  will  enrich 
twenty  acres,  will  enrich  a  thousand  At  the  same 
time,  twenty  acres,  well  wrought,  are  better  and  more 
profitable,  than  five  hundred  shiftlessly  managed,  or 
merely  run  over  to  catch  what  they  will  yield,  of  their 
own  accord,  or  under  half  cultivation.  This  hitherto 
has  been  the  folly  of  our  agricultural  methods.  There 
probably  is  no  farm  in  Connecticut,  however  large,  the 
whole  amount  of  labor  and  expeniture  on  which  might 
not  be  more  profitably  employed  on  fifty  or  seventy- 
five  acres. 

In  view  of  facts  like  these,  let  the  young  man  who 
would  emigrate,  consider  whether  it  is  not  better  to 
begin  with  a  small  farm  here,  and  expect,  by  bringing 
it  into  the  very  highest  cultivation,  thus  to  extend  or 
enlarge  his  property.  In  ordinary  cases,  I  am  quite 
certain,  provided  he  goes  to  work  skillfully,  that  he 
will  advance  in  property  more  rapidly  than  he  will  to 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  245 

emigrate.  Suppose  lie  were  to  remove  to  the  west,  say 
to  Illinois,  and  there  taking  up  one  hundred  and  sixty 
acres  of  new  land,  at  one  and  a  half  dollars  an  acre, 
raise  it,  during  his  lifetime,  to  the  value  of  ten  dollars 
an  acre,  which  is  quite  as  much  as,  in  ordinary  cases, 
and  leaving  buildings  out  of  the  account,  he  will  do. 
Then  he  advances  on  the  property  invested  one  thou 
sand  two  hundred  and  seventy-five  dollars.  If  he  buys 
forty  acres  of  land  here,  at  thirty  dollars  an  acre,  and 
raises  its  value  to  one  hundred  dollars,  then  he  makes 
a  clear  increase  of  two  thousand  eight  hundred  dollars. 
In  the  former  case,  he  will  be  worth,  adding  the  pur 
chase  money  to  the  increased  value,  fifteen  hundred 
dollars.  In  the  other,  he  will  be  worth  four  thousand 
dollars.  But  the  purchase  money,  at  the  west,  is,  by 
the  supposition,  two  hundred  and  twenty-five  dollars, 
and  here  it  is  twelve  hundred  dollars.  It  will  cost  him, 
however,  two  hundred  dollars,  or  more,  to  remove  his 
family  to  the  west,  leaving  a  difference  of  seven  hundred 
and  seventy-five  dollars,  which  probably  will  be  fully 
compensated  by  the  buildings  and  fences  that  he  finds 
on  his  premises ;  which  makes  the  original  expenditure 
as  nearly  even  as  it  may  be.  And  thus,  with  an  even 
expenditure,  he  obtains  a  property  of  fifteen  hundred 
dollars  in  one  case,  and  four  thousand  in  the  other. 
At  the  same  time,  it  is  far  more  easy  for  him  to  raise 
money  here,  over  and  above  what  is  necessary  to  sup 
port  life,  than  it  is  at  the  west.  A  farm  of  forty  acres, 
in  good  cultivation,  will  yield  more  of  clear  income, 
than  one  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  at  the  west,  allowing 

21* 


246  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

for  the  low  price  of  products  there,  the  expense,  often 
great,  of  transporting  them  to  a  market,  and  the  en 
hanced  price  of  all  the  commodities  necessary  to  the 
comfort  of  a  family. 

I  am  well  aware  that  these  computations  do  not 
agree  with  current  opinion.  But  there  is  a  good  reason 
why  they  do  not ;  for  the  truth  is,  that  no  man  or  family 
thinks  of  living  here,  as  the  emigrant  is  compelled  to 
live.  If  you  will  make  up  your  mind  to  live  here  for 
ten  or  twenty  years,  in  a  log-house,  with  one  room  and 
perhaps  no  floor,  to  sit  on  stools  instead  of  chairs,  to 
have  but  one  suit  of  clothes,  and  these  of  the  coarsest 
and  cheapest  kind  possible,  to  use  sugar  only  as  a  deli 
cacy  and  live  on  the  coarsest  fare,  to  ride  in  a  box 
wagon  or  cart,  to  pick  your  way  through  forests  by 
marks  on  the  trees,  and  swim  rivers  for  want  of  bridges, 
to  bring  up  your  children  without  education,  foregoing, 
in  life,  the  guidance,  and  in  death,  the  comforts  of  re 
ligion — in  a  word,  if  you  will  sacrifice  everything  here 
above  the  range  of  raw  physical  necessity,  and  consent 
to  become  a  barbarian  as  regards  all  the  refinements 
of  life,  you  will  see  how  it  is  that  the  emigrant  is  able 
to  get  a  start,  and  why  he  is  supposed  to  do  it  so  much 
more  easily  at  the  west.  His  life  is  a  life  of  untold 
hardships.  He  consents  to  be  no  more  a  man  but  a 
tool,  offers  up  his  flesh  and  his  bones  to  the  wear  of  a 
comfortless,  homeless  drudgery,  that  he  may  prepare 
something  for  his  family.  The  first  generation  can 
hardly  be  said  to  live.  They  let  go  life,  throw  it  away, 
for  the  benefit  of  the.  generation  to  come  after  them. 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  247 

And  these  will  be  found,  in  most  cases,  to  have  grown 
up  in  such,  rudeness  and  barbarity,  that  it  will  require 
one  or  two  generations  more  to  civilize  their  habit. 

I  would  not  draw  a  darker  picture  of  the  emigrant's 
life  than  truth  requires.  Sometimes  he  is  fortunate 
enough,  in  the  place  and  circumstances  of  his  settle 
ment,  to  command  a  condition  of  comfort,  within  a 
short  time;  but  how  often  does  he  suffer  a  lot  more 
severe  than  what  I  have  described.  The  fever  enters 
his  dismal  hut,  and  there,  away  from  friends  and  re 
mote  from  sympathy,  he  closes,  with  his  own  hands, 
the  eyes  of  his  wife,  or,  one  after  another,  the  eyes 
of  his  children,  for  whose  sake  he  emigrated.  Or  he 
lies  shivering  with  disease  himself,  while  his  crops  are 
rotting  down  in  the  field,  and  when  he  has  worn  out 
his  year  or  two  of  fever,  finds  that  his  constitution  is 
fatally  broken  b}r  it  and  the  other  hardships  he  has 
encountered,  leaving  him  only  the  wreck  of  his  powers, 
and  the  infirmities  of  a  premature  decay.  Or  the  prairie 
fire  burns  up  his  cattle,  or  the  late  spring  frost,  or  the 
smut,  or  the  rust,  or  the  weevil,  or  the  fly,  destroys  his 
wheat,  while  the  mortgage,  or  the  bills  of  his  physician, 
hang  over  him,  waiting  for  the  proceeds  of  the  crop 
which  has  perished.  A  winter,  a  whole  year  of  desti 
tution,  is  before  him  and  his  family;  and  possibly  a 
second  year  of  unrewarded  industry.  "Well  is  it  if  the 
want  they  suffer  and  the  dismal  forebodings  which 
haunt  them,  do  not  shake  their  courage,  and  bring  in 
some  disease  or  infirmity  that  will  quite  complete  their 
misery.  Such  trials  are -not  extraordinary  or  singular. 


248  AGKI  CULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

They  are  so  common  as  to  be  considered  among  the 
proper  chances  of  emigration,  where  it  is  not  fortified 
by  abundant  means  to  support  such  adversities. 

Thus  far  I  have  spoken  to  the  question,  as  one  of 
mere  physical  economy,  or  profit  and  loss.  I  have 
shown  you,  I  think,  that  agriculture  in  New  England 
is  and  always  may  be  a  profitable  interest.  There  is, 
in  fact,  no  interest  in  which,  at  this  moment,  money 
and  industry  can  be  employed  to  so  great  profit.  So 
far  from  finding  his  advantage  in  emigration  to  the  new 
States  of  the  west,  the  young  farmer,  there  is  scarcely 
room  to  doubt,  may  advance  in  property  here,  with 
much  greater  certainty  and  rapidity,  with  a  sacrifice  of 
fewer  comforts  and  an  endurance  of  fewer  hardships. 
It  only  requires  more  of  skill  and  address  and  a  more 
thorough  knowledge  of  agriculture  as  an  art.  Perhaps 
I  ought  to  admit  that  a  man  whose  only  power  is  in  his 
two  arms  may  well  enough  go  where  his  two  arms  are 
all  that  is  demanded,  but  the  man  who  has  invention 
and  a  head  to  plan  out  schemes  of  improvement,  had 
much  better  remain  here,  where  his  higher  gifts  may  be 
employed  to  assist  his  advances. 

But  it  would  be  wrong  and  even  degrading  to  sus 
pend  the  question  here.  The  highest  and  best  interests 
of  life,  those  which  add  most  to  its  comfort,  dignity  and 
happiness,  are  the  interests  of  society  and  character. 
Whatever  man  or  family  removes  to  any  new  country 
should  understand  that  he  makes  a  large  remove  also 
towards  barbarism  ;  for  this  necessary  incident  belongs 
to  emigration,  or  a  newly  colonized  state.  He  leaves 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  249 

the  land  of  schools  and  polite  education  behind  him. 
If  he  settles  where  land  is  cheapest,  which  is  the  main 
temptation  to  removal,  he  goes  utterly  beyond  the 
reach  of  schools  of  any  sort,  there  to  see  his  children 
grow  up  in  wildness  and  ignorance  of  the  world.  Or 
if,  by  much  expense,  which  he  is  little  able  to  bear,  he 
gets  up  a  school,  it  is  kept  in  some  log-hut,  by  a  teacher 
as  rude  as  the  place.  Not  unlikely  he  will  find  himself 
in  a  region  where  reading  and  book  knowledge  are  de 
spised  and  condemned  as  among  the  black  arts,  and  he 
will  be  mortified  to  find  that  his  children  are  more 
ready  to  make  a  pride  of  ignorance  than  to  learn. 
Seeing  them  grow  up  a  coarse,  undisciplined  herd 
around  him,  he  will  begin  to  ask  what  is  the  advantage 
of  growing  fine  wheat  out  of  doors,  when  he  can  not 
grow  sons  and  daughters  within,  fit  to  comfort  his 
life  and  satisfy  his  better  hopes  and  more  honorable 
feelings ;  or  why  he  should  care  to  hunt  the  wild  beasts 
and  exterminate  the  vermin  that  infest  his  fields,  when 
his  children  are  as  wild  as  they. 

I  speak  here  discriminately  and  not  of  western  so 
ciety  generally.  No  man  estimates  more  highly  than  I 
do  the  many  noble  traits  in  western  character.  The 
faults  it  has  are  most  of  them  only  the  necessary  inci 
dents  of  a  new  social  state,  and  time,  it  is  to  be  hoped, 
will  remove  them,  as  it  has  been  gradually  removing  a 
similar  class  of  barbarisms  in  New  England.  But  time 
is  requisite.  Meanwhile  all  the  inconveniences  and 
privations  of  a  new  social  state  must  be  endured. 

He  finds,  too,  not  seldom,  that  he  has  gone  beyond 


250  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

the  pale  of  society.  There  is  no  common  character, 
therefore  little  society,  in  the  people  round  him.  Per 
haps,  which  is  quite  as  well,  he  is  totally  remote  from 
all  living  beings.  He  goes  forth  to  his  labors,  and  the 
bark  of  his  dog  and  the  ringing  of  his  ax  in  the  woods 
are  the  only  sounds  that  break  the  silence  of  his  retire 
ment  for  whole  weeks,  unless  perhaps  a  straggling 
family  of  Irish  or  poor  Germans  come  that  way  to 
make  trial  of  his  hospitality.  Better  this  than  the  so 
ciety  of  some  raw  upstart  village,  where  adventurers  of 
all  sorts  chanced  last  year  to  pitch  their  tents,  hoping 
to  build  a  city  and  make  their  fortune  out  of  each 
other;  where  the  diversions,  jokes,  frolics  and  amuse 
ments  have  all  an  outlaw  character  of  indecency  and 
violence.  Here  to  live,  here  to  bring  up  sons  and 
marry  daughters,  is  a  sad  inheritance  to  compensate  for 
the  single  benefit  of  cheap  land  and  a  wide  range  of  acres. 
Doubtless  you  are  little  conscious  of  any  such  thing  as 
society  here  at  home ;  for  there  is  much  less  of  it  in  our 
agricultural  towns,  than  there  should  be.  But  it  is 
something  to  live  upon  a  traveled  road,  to  look  on 
comfortable  houses  and  churches  sprinkled  in  the  dis 
tance  round  you,  to  know  the  men  and  families,  whose 
farms  border  upon  yours,  and  to  have  known  their 
fathers  before  them;  something  to  talk  with  them 
across  the  fence,  and  meet  them,  every  Sunday,  at 
church,  in  their  best  attire ;  something  to  be  in  a  state 
that  is  under  law  and  reduced  to  established  order, 
where  a  homogeneous  people  feel  the  common  bond  of 
social  institutions  and  interests.  If  there  be  too  little 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  251 

society  in  this,  there  is  yet  society,  and  a  humanizing, 
softening  power,  the  loss  of  which  will  soon  be  visible 
in  the  character  and  comfort  of  your  families. 

You  will  most  likely  find,  too,  in  removing  to  a  new 
country,  that  you  have  left  behind  you  all  that  is  valu 
able  in  the  sacred  blessings  of  religion.  And  what  is  a 
ISTew  England  man  who  is  separated  from  his  religion, 
the  power  that  sweetens  his  family,  fortifies  his  indus 
try,  makes  him  a  king  in  his  little  heritage  of  rocks  and 
snows,  and,  when  he  has  done  with  these,  lord  and  pos 
sessor  of  worlds  as  durable  as  the  unbending  and  confi 
dent  principles  which  support  his  life  ?  Not  that  our 
new  countries  are  destitute  of  religion,  but  they  have 
so  many  varieties  of  religion  and  false  religion  and  irre- 
ligion  mixed  together,  the  confusion  is  so  distracting 
and  the  medley  so  barbarous,  that  an  intelligent  mind, 
wishing  to  worship  God  in  some  way  of  intelligence 
and  order,  can  seldom  be  accommodated.  One  preacher 
follows  another,  by  such  kind  of  accident  as  governs 
wandering  stars.  Often  they  can  not  read,  sometimes 
they  are  vagabonds  in  character,  worthier  of  a  prison 
than  to  be  at  large,  but  they  have  all  one  qualification ; 
they  can  hold  forth  as  noisily  and  hold  on  as  manfully 
as  any  one  may  desire.  If  you  have  a  house  of  wor 
ship,  it  must  belong  to  the  public  in  general,  and  every 
man  must  bring  in  whatsoever  teacher  or  imposter  he 
wishes  to  hear.  Ten  times  in  a  year,  possibly,  there 
will  come  along  an  educated  and  qualified  preacher, 
one  who  is  able  to  communicate  instruction  and  con 
duct  a  religious  service  with  propriety.  You  bring  out 


252  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

the  young  barbarians  growing  up  in  your  family, 
hoping  that  they  will  receive  some  benefit.  But  they 
are  so  unused  to  any  intelligent  views  of  religion,  that 
they  can  see  no  meaning  in  a  manner  without  phrensy 
and  uproar.  The  best  that  can  be  hoped  for  your 
family  is  that  one  will  grow  up  a  Presbyterian,  another 
a  Methodist,  another  a  Baptist,  and  as  many  more  will 
be  Campbelites  or  Mormons  or  Infidels.  It  is  well  if 
you  do  not  even  lose  all  sense  of  religious  obligation 
yourself,  only  to  have  the  memory  of  its  hallowed 
scenes  and  duties  return  with  bitterness  unspeakable  in 
your  dying  hours.  Or  if  you  retain  your  sense  of 
religion,  as  the  best  blessing  of  life,  how  often  will 
you  regret  the  quiet  and  hallowed  scenes  of  a  New 
England  Sabbath,  now  lost  to  be  seen  no  more.  Your 
nearest  approach  to  such  a  Sabbath  is  to  sit  down  alone, 
upon  some  log  in  the  deep  still  woods,  and  let  your 
memory  of  blessings  left  behind  water  your  eyes  with 
tears  of  sorrow  and  self- accusation. 

Making  all  these  sacrifices,  you  will  have  done  it  at 
the  expense  of  another,  which,  if  you  do  not  feel  it,  will 
be  even  the  greater  loss  to  you.  You  will  have  sacri 
ficed  home,  old  localities,  old  friends  and  acquaintances, 
the  hearth  at  which  fathers  and  kindred  are  gathered, 
or  the  graves  where  they  sleep.  This,  I  know,  it  may 
be  a  duty  oftentimes  to  do,  and  when  it  is  a  duty,  it  is 
even  a  weakness  to  shrink  from  it.  But  we  have  at 
tairied,  as  a  people,  to"  a  degree  of  facility  in  this  kind 
of  merit,  which  is  much  to  be  deprecated.  I  can  not 
look  upon  it  as  less  than  a  very  great  dishonor,  in  any 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  253 

man  or  people,  to  make  everything  of  money  and 
nothing  of  affections.  The  life  of  man  is  in  his  heart, 
and,  if  he  does  not  live  there,  I  care  not  what  other 
success  may  befall  him,  he  does  not  live.  The  roots 
that  nourish  a  man's  life  are  in  his  love — local  love, 
family  love,  love  of  old  friends  and  familiar  scenes,  and 
he  who  has  no  roots  of  locality,  is  not  a  living  man. 
The  activity  and  stir  of  new  scenes  and  new  adventures 
may  do  something  for  him,  but  his  activity  is  dry, 
wearing  out  life  by  its  friction,  only  expelling  regret, 
never  watering  the  soul  with  quiet  dews  of  feeling  and 
enjoyment.  Tearing  yourself  thus  away  from  old 
scenes  and  going  forth  as  an  emigrant,  you  become  a 
public  adventurer  and  fortune-hunter  among  the  gen 
eral  herd  of  adventurers,  your  views  perhaps  become 
enlarged  by  the  new  scenes  in  which  you  mingle,  you 
are  all  enterprise  and  activity,  but  it  seems  to  be  the 
activity  of  negation ;  you  want  something  to  give  a 
relish  to  life,  perhaps  you  will  never  guess  what  it  is 
that  you  want,  but  the  truth  is  that  you  want  roots  and 
moisture,  the  feeling  of  locality  and  home  and  custom 
ary  love.  A  large  farm  and  a  fine  crop  of  wheat  do 
not,  for  some  reason,  yield  that  genial  and  mellow  sat 
isfaction  which  you  long  for.  Possibly  you  think  of 
the  old  rocky  pasture  and  the  white  birch  wood,  and 
the  little  field  of  beans  and  the  five  loads  of  potatoes 
and  the  three  milch  cows  and  the  old  father  scowling 
in  the  meadow,  when  his  scythe  hooks  round  a  stone, 
and  you  wonder  why  this  Eastern  imagery  keeps 
thrusting  itself  into  your  mind,  and  why,  despite  of  all 

22 


254  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

reason,  it  persists  in  wearing  such  a  taking  look.  Ah, 
there  is  a  meaning  in  this !  it  is  the  effort  of  your  na 
ture  to  realize  a  local  love;  a  sigh  never  vented  in 
words,  for  that  wealth  of  the  heart,  which  possibly  you 
relinquished  with  no  thought  of  its  importance,  but 
which  no  measure  of  good  fortune  can  ever  wholly 
compensate. 

Such  are  some  of  the  thoughts  which  I  have  wished, 
on  this  occasion,  to  suggest.  I  can  not  deny  that  1  am 
instigated  to  some  degree,  in  these  suggestions,  by  a 
feeling  of  domestic  interest,  or  the  interest  of  society 
here ;  though  I  have  desired  not  to  be,  to  any  such  ex 
tent  as  can  not  be  justified.  I  can  not  be  ignorant,  I 
do  not  wish  to  be  ignorant,  that  the  state  of  Connecti 
cut  has  a  deep  concern  in  this  subject.  If  the  lands  of 
this  state  were  brought  into  that  high  cultivation  of 
which  they  are  capable,  it  could  easily  sustain  a  million 
of  people  subsisting  by  agriculture  alone.  Sustain 
them  in  greater  thrift  and  happiness,  than  they  will 
ever  realize  by  removal.  Our  hills  and  valleys  would 
become  a  scene  of  beauty  for  the  eye  to  rest  upon,  such 
as  can  with  difficulty  be  produced  in  any  other  part  of 
the  national  domain.  ~No  ornamental  rock-work  will 
be  needed  to  set  off  our  gardens  and  landscapes.  JSTa- 
ture's  rock-work  will  stand,  and  it  will  be  confessed, 
when  every  cliff  is  footed  with  green  meadows  and 
waving  harvests,  that  we  have  not  one  too  many. 
Meantime  the  toil  that  is  necessary  to  clear  our  soil  of 
what  is  movable,  is  just  what  is  requisite  to  sharpen 
the  vigor  of  our  people ;  for  whetstones  are  needed  to 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  255 

sharpen  a  race  of  men,  as  truly  as  to  sharpen  to  a  cutting 
edge  any  other  kind  of  instruments.  The  necessities 
of  a  rough  country  and  an  intractable  soil  are  good  ne 
cessities.  To  live  easily  is  dangerous,  and,  for  just  this 
reason,  there  is  cause  to  apprehend  that  the  future  gen 
erations  of  our  western  country  will  become  a  sluggish, 
inefficient  race,  exactly  opposite  to  their  present  char 
acter. 

You  will  observe,  also,  that  when  our  population  be 
gins  to  be  considerably  enlarged,  every  kind  of  public 
charge  or  expense  will  be  more  easily  supported.  "We 
shall  have  schools  of  a  high  order  in  all  our  towns  and 
villages,  stone  bridges  durable  and  safe,  macadamized 
roads  spanning  our  hills  and  threading  our  valleys, 
such  as  now  spread  over  the  map  of  England,  weaving 
all  the  hamlets  together,  in  a  network  of  easy  corres 
pondence,  indicating  and  also  promoting  the  advanced 
wealth  and  civilization  of  the  people.  The  institutions 
of  religion,  too,  will  be  easily  sustained.  It  will  not  be 
necessary,  as  now,  in  the  thinly  peopled  towns,  where 
two  or  three  different  sects  are  struggling  ineffectually 
to  sustain  their  feeble  churches,  to  hold  them  up  by 
disbursements  of  public  charity  from  year  to  year. 
There  will  be  room  for  all  to  prosper  together,  gather 
ing  ample  and  efficient  congregations,  erecting  elegant 
churches  and  commanding  the  service  of  a  talented 
ministry.  And  in  this  view,  I  have  often  felt  that  the 
improvement  of  our  agriculture  is  connected  with  con 
sequences,  that  even  make  it  a  fit  subject  of  religious 
appeal.  Sitting  in  a  Board  of  Missions  for  the  aid 


256  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

of  our  feeble  churches ;  hearing  their  annual  tale  of  dis 
couragement,  the  low  rate  of  their  taxable  property, 
the  losses  and  diminutions  they  suffer,  by  emigration, 
and  the  little  hope  they  offer  of  ever  being  able  to  up 
hold  the  institutions,  long  ago  planted  by  their  fathers, 
except  as  they  remain  a  perpetual  charitable  incurn- 
brance,  I  have  often  felt  that  it  were  quite  as  well  to  be 
sitting  in  a  Board  of  Agriculture.  The  first  hope 
of  these  drooping  churches  is  in  the  improved  methods 
of  agriculture.  Charity  may  relieve  their  want,  this 
only  can  change  their  want  to  plenty  and  power.  This 
conviction  it  is  which  has  moved  me,  as  a  minister 
of  religion,  to  step  out  of  what  many  will  consider  my 
appropriate  sphere,  on  the  present  occasion.  I  feel 
that  I  was  never  more  truly  within  my  sphere  than 
here.  I  see  the  best  interests  of  religion,  for  all  future 
time,  depending  on  the  subject  which  I  here  present, 
and,  if  I  am  so  happy  as  to  start  new  impressions  on 
this  subject  of  agriculture,  as  a  New  England  interest,  I 
shall  not  only  add  to  the  comfort  and  prosperity  of  our 
state,  in  other  respects,  but  shall  advance  the  better 
interests  of  society  and  character,  and  do  up  the  work 
of  at  least  one  Missionary  Board.  And  with  this  I 
shall  be  satisfied. 

To  realize  this  picture  of  physical  and  moral  im 
provement,  ought,  meantime,  to  be  an  attractive  hope 
to  our  sons  and  daughters,  detaining  them  here  among 
us,  stimulating,  their  inquiries  after  scientific  principles, 
and  promoting  their  invention  of  new  modes  of  im 
provement,  such  as  will  enrich  both  them  and  the  great 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  257 

and  respectable  class  to  which  they  belong.  Nor  is  it 
only  they  who  have  an  interest  in  the  agricultural  im 
provement  of  the  State.  Our  cities  are  dependent  for 
their  growth  and  prosperity  on  the  same  causes.  Let 
them  not  forget,  while  seeking,  by  railroads  and  other 
expensive  methods,  to  command  a  back  country  for 
their  trade,  that  it  is  possible  to  make  one  close  at 
hand.  As  large  a  back  country  can  be  made  between 
Hartford  and  Litchfield,  as  now  we  should  have,  ^com 
manding  the  trade  of  all  who  occupy  the  region  be 
tween  us  and  Albany.  There  can  be  as  many  people, 
as  much  wealth,  as  many  wants  to  supply,  as  many 
products  to  sell  and  to  purchase,  as  much  to  foster  the 
wealth  and  future  growth  of  our  city.  In  the  fortunes 
of  agriculture  we  are  all  alike  interested  and  we  are  all 
united,  men  of  the  city,  men  of  the  country,  politicians, 
tradesmen,  householders,  landholders,  friends  of  relig 
ion  and  friends  of  the  state,  to  join  hands  in  the  promo 
tion  of  agriculture  as  our  common  cause.  The  reviv 
ing  of  this  interest  will  give  a  spring  to  public  spirit 
among  us,  set  us  forward  in  social  refinement,  impart 
courage  and  strength  to  every  good  interest.  Mean 
time,  could  we  make  our  country  and  its  people  such  a 
spectacle  as  it  should  be,  attracting  the  eyes  of  the  na 
tion,  and  showing  to  the  younger  and  wilder  portions 
what  scenes  of  comfort,  character  and  ornament  may  be 
prepared,  on  this  rugged  soil  and  under  these  frowning 
skies,  it  is  fairly  impossible  to  overestimate  the  impulse 
such  a  spectacle  would  give  to  all  the  better  interests 
of  our  great  and  rising  nation. 

22* 


258  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

Suffer  me  now,  gentlemen,  in  closing,  to  suggest  a 
few  things,  that  demand  your  attention.  Agricultural 
societies  are  useful,  but  they  do  not  exhaust  your  duty. 
Do  not  overlook  those  expedients  which  dignify  agri 
culture.  A  great  deal  more  of  attention  to  domestic 
and  rural  architecture  is  demanded.  A  house  can  as 
well  be  thrown  into  a  form  pleasing  to  a  cultivated  eye, 
as  into  any  other.  Study  situation,  material,  plan, 
form,  color,  everything  that  belongs  to  picturesque 
effect.  And  if  your  country  joiners  will  not  know  any 
thing  better  than  to  build  you  an  oblong  clapboarded 
box,  with  a  gable  to  the  street,  either  become  your  own 
architect,  or  go  to  one  who  has  taste  and  experience  to 
draft  a  plan  and  elevation  for  you.  Put  your  stye  and 
your  barns  where  they  belong.  Try  your  hand  at 
high  ornamental  cultivation  upon,  at  least,  a  small 
space  of  ground  before  and  about  your  residences.  Let 
it  appear  to  the  passer-by,  when  he  looks  upon  your 
neat  combinations  of  architecture,  shades,  flowers  and 
smoothly  shaven  turf,  that  a  man  lives  here,  who  is 
something  above  a  mere  drudge  and  sloven ;  a  man 
who  has  tastes  and  cultivated  opinions,  not  a  servant  of 
barns  and  cornfields,  who  only  grazes  with  his  cattle, 
and  is  capable  of  no  other  enjoyment.  Let  your  sons 
and  daughters  also  have  the  benefit  of  these  tasteful  ar 
rangements;  for  it  will  do  more  for  their  standing, 
character,  and  future  happiness,  than  may  at  once  ap 
pear. 

Have  a  special  care  also  of  your  schools.  One  great 
reason  why  agriculture  droops  is,  that  the  intellectual 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  259 

force,  the  ideas  of  the  youth,  are  not  awakened.  Be 
dissatisfied  with  your  schools  and  your  children  if  you 
do  not  see  their  enthusiasm  kindled.  Some  text-book 
ought  also  to  be  introduced  into  every  school,  which 
teaches  the  first  principles  of  agriculture,  including  the 
rudiments  of  botany,  vegetable  physiology  and  chem 
istry,  all  as  related  to  each  other ;  the  laws  of  growth, 
the  science  of  budding  and  grafting,  the  modes  of  in 
vigorating  soils,  the  modes  and  uses  of  drainage,  not 
omitting  the  economy  of  raising  weeds.  A  few  first 
principles  of  science,  once  wrought  into  the  mind,  will 
have  a  wondrous  power.  You  are  to  understand  also, 
that  the  old  class  of  drudges,  who  have  lived  out  two- 
thirds  of  their  life,  without  a  thought  of  improvement, 
must  die  as  they  have  lived.  There  is  no  hope  in 
grafting  upon  old  stocks.  You  can  never  rnake  them 
understand  what  improvement  means.  There  is  even  a 
want  of  orthodoxy  in  it ;  they  despise  it  as  a  boyish 
folly.  The  young  and  fertile  mind  is  your  only  hope. 

At  the  same  time  cultivate  society  among  yourselves. 
Our  agricultural  classes  make  too  little  of  society. 
There  is  a  humanizing  power  in  good  manners,  and  a 
quickening  power  to  the  mind  in  social  intercourse, 
which  no  people  can  afford  to  spare.  It  creates  a  sense 
of  character  superior  to  gossip,  which  is  the  bane  of  the 
country,  fertilizes  good  feeling,  prepares  personal  confi 
dence  and  self:respect,  and  redeems  labor  from  a  dull 
and  brutish  habit.  Separated  from  society,  man  rusts 
into  a  shy,  low-minded,  selfish  being,  and  becomes  as 
mean  and  contracted  in  his  prejudices,  as  he  is  in  his 


260  AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST. 

sphere  of  life.  Having  the  greatest  respect  for  agricul 
ture,  I  can  not  flatter  it  with  vain  compliments.  Let 
not  the  impression,  that  agriculture  makes  a  more  intel 
ligent  and  elevated  class  of  men  than  manufacturers,  be 
too  confidently  adopted.  It  does,  undoubtedly,  pro 
duce  a  better  and  more  healthy  staple  to  make  men  of. 
But  in  manufactories,  certain  great  laws  of  mechanical 
and  chemical  science  are  always  called  into  application ; 
these  are  a  kind  of  leaven  to  ingenuity,  a  spur  to  cu 
rious  inquiry  and  speculation ;  and  the  people,  being 
thrown  together,  at  their  work,  in  a  kind  of  perpetual 
society,  also  spur  and  stimulate  each  other.  Hence, 
with  less  of  native  volume,  there  is  apt,  truth  obliges 
me  to  say,  to  be  more  of  mental  activity  among  the  man 
ufacturing  classes.  Science  and  society  are  the  great 
wants  of  agriculture.  Men  grow  up  in  the  retirement 
of  the  fields  with  grand  native  capacities,  but  they 
want  some  quickening  stimulus  to  keep  their  minds 
alive,  something  to  awaken  curiosity,  set  them  on  in 
quiry  and  speculation,  and  bring  their  rivalries  and 
sensibilities  into  active  play.  Having  this,  and  being 
men  of  independence  in  their  station,  they  will  de 
velop  a  proportionate  dignity  and  power  of  character. 
Without  it  they  sink  into  the  most  deplorable  dullness, 
and  become  a  backward,  rude-minded  class.  There 
fore,  I  say,  look  to  your  schools,  cultivate  society.  The 
soul  of  all  improvement  is  the  improvement  of  the  soul. 
There  is  yet  one  prospect  opened  in  this  subject  of 
agricultural  improvement,  which  must  be  suggested, 
and  with  that  I  close.  I  have  already  intimated  the 


AGRICULTURE    AT    THE    EAST.  261 

conviction,  that  nothing  but  this  can  save  us  from  an 
entirely  "new  distribution  of  property.  If  the  small 
farmers  do  not  awake  to  scientific  improvement,  and 
prepare  to  realize  their  profit,  and  support  the  comfort 
of  their  families  on  yet  smaller  estates,  great  landhold 
ers  will  come  in  to  buy  up  the  impoverished  farms,  in 
the  view,  at  first,  perhaps,  of  converting  them  into  pas 
tures,  as  now  they  are  doing  in  Yermont.  Then,  after 
wards,  these  great  estates  will  be  brought  into  improve 
ment,  and  the  sons  of  our  small  owners,  who  have  too 
little  character  to  perceive  their  true  interest,  will  be 
come  a  class  of  operative  workers,  or  serfs,  under  the 
great  landlords,  and  we  shall  have  all  the  miseries  of 
European  society  reproduced  here.  But  if  our  people 
can  take  up  new  thoughts  of  improvement,  and  go  to 
work  as  men  of  intelligence  and  skill  to  enrich  and  fer 
tilize  their  small  estates,  then  we  shall  see  our  soil,  in 
all  future  time,  covered  with  a  thrifty,  independent 
race,  living  in  comfort  and  surrounded  with  ornament, 
every  estate  a  manor,  every  house  occupied  by  a  lord, 
society  an  element  of  republican  virtue  and  moderation, 
and  all  together  a  symbol  to  mankind  of  the  great  and 
beneficent  truth,  that  the  soil  was  made  for  man,  and 
equal  industry  the  title,  under  God,  to  equal  and  uni 
versal  happiness. 


VII. 

LIFE,   OR  THE  LIVES.* 


THE  distinction  between  objects  alive  and  objects 
without  life  was  one  of  the  first  things  apprehended  by 
mankind.  The  progenitors  of  the  race  saw  it  just  as 
we  do  now.  Only  it  is  a  somewhat  curious  fact  that, 
when  their  imagination  began  to  be  a  little  exercised 
about  causes,  their  tendency  was  rather  to  resolve  the 
lifeless  objects  by  the  living,  than  the  living  by  the 
lifeless ;  a  tendency,  which,  under  modern  science,  is 
completely  reversed.  Thus  Pan,  playing  on  his  pipe, 
they  took  for  a  symbol  of  the  All,  as  his  name  will  in 
dicate  ;  conceiving  that,  in  nature,  there  must  be  some 
living  soul  of  harmony,  discoursing  ever  tunefully  with 
itself,  and  moving  mystic  dances  in  the  seasons  and  the 
skies.  Afterwards,  under  a  method  a  little  closer  to 
philosophy,  they  began  to  refer  the  motions  of  the 
heavenly  bodies  to  some  Soul  of  the  Universe,  which 
they  supposed  to  be  operating,  consciously  or  uncon 
sciously,  in  all  such  stellar  changes.  Astrology  and 
alchemy  appear  to  have  originated  in  a  similar  impres- 

*  Delivered,  in  part,  as  a  Lecture,  in  Hartford  and  elsewhere,  at  various 
times 


LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES.   "  263 

sion;  as  if  there  were  some  spirit  to  be  conjured  with, 
in  the  junctions  of  the  stars  and  the  atoms.  Even 
Kepler  himself,  last  of  the  old  school  of  science  and 
first  of  the  new,  was  so  thoroughly  possessed  by  the 
soul-myths  of  science  in  the  former  ages,  that  he  looked 
upon  the  Earth  as  being,  probably,  a  huge  living  mon 
ster,  whose  breathing  caused  the  tides  of  the  sea,  and 
whose  gills  were  the  volcanoes. 

Now,  as  already  intimated,  the  tendency  is  to  resolve 
the  mystery  of  lives  themselves,  by  the  causes  and 
forces  of  dead  matter.  For  the  prodigious  successes  we 
have  had  in  the  investigation  of  dead  matter,  that  is  in 
astronomy,  chemistry,  geology,  and  kindred  sciences, 
scarcely  allow  us  to  look  for  success  any  where,  except 
under  laws  and  methods  so  egregiously  magnified  by 
the  discoveries  we  have  made.  Nature  figures  in  our 
thoughts  mainly  as  a  vast  wheel-movement,  steam- 
engine,  laboratory,  world,  so  that  when  we  turn  our 
thoughts  upon  a  living  body,  that  of  man  for  example, 
and  find  the  heart  in  it  working  as  a  pump,  the  lungs 
as  a  fireplace,  the  eye  as  a  telescope,  the  ear  as  a  drum, 
we  are  so  much  taken  with  these  mechanical  discover 
ies,  that  we  accept  them  for  just  what  they  are  not ;  viz., 
as  a  complete  solution,  an  end  of  all  inquiry.  Could 
we  suffer  the  question,  what  keeps  the  pump  in  play, 
what  works  the  bellows  of  the  lungs,  what  makes  the 
eye  to  see,  the  ear  to  hear,  as  telescopes  and  drums  can 
not,  we  should  find  that  nothing  really  is  solved,  but 
that  we  have  quite  as  many  and  difficult  mysteries  on 
hand  as  we  had  at  the  beginning.  Thus  far,  even  our 


264  LIFE,     OR    THE     LIVES. 

physiologists  themselves  appear  to  have  generally  had 
their  minds  holden,  by  the  overpowering  laws  and 
analogies  of  dead  matter,  those  of  mechanics  and  chem 
istry.  They  talk  of  life,  and  raise  the  true  question 
concerning  it,  but  commonly  end  in  some  solution  that 
quite  dispenses  with  it.  Life  is  a  nature  too  nearly 
metaphysical  to  hold  any  determinate  figure  in  their  in 
vestigations.  What  can  they  do  with  lives,  taken  as 
dynamic  forces,  not  of  matter,  but  sovereign  over  it? 
These  innumerable  and  mysterious  workers  that  in 
habit  earth  and  air  and  sea,  filling  all  things  with 
beauty  fragrance  and  motion,  compelling  brute  matter 
to  assume  millions  of  definite  shapes,  to  weave  and 
blossom  and  palpitate  and  rejoice;  these  soul-like 
creatures  next  below  us,  types  of  what  we  are,  looking 
up  to  us  in  their  half-intelligent  endeavor  and  claim 
ing,  as  it  were,  afnnity  with  us — what  recognition  do 
they  get  from  the  scientific  investigators  even  of  the 
bodies  they  build  and  actuate?  What  need  has  sci 
ence  of  these  very  questionable  entities  ?  They  are  too 
thin,  too  spirit-like,  virtual  nonentities — let  them  be 
dismissed.  Ruled  out  in  this  manner,  Life  becomes  a 
virtually  dead  word,  wanting  even  some  kind  of  intel 
lectual  resurrection  to  give  it  a  meaning. 

Having  this,  now,  for  our  object,  let  us  try  to 
freshen  it  a  little  from  a  distance,  before  we  enter  into 
the  deeper  subtleties  of  the  question.  Suppose  that 
some  celestial  traveler  like  Voltaire's  Micromegas,  on  a 
visit  from  the  Dog  Star  to  Saturn,  should  turn  his 
journey  hither  ward  to  our  lower  world.  Let  it  be  true 


LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES.  265 

that,  in  his  native  planet,  the  Dog  Star,  there  is 
nothing  but  mineral  substance;  no  soil  enriched  by 
vegetable  deposites,  110  plants,  no  trees,  no  animals,  the 
inhabitants  being  fitted  with  bodies  of  flint,  or  feldspar, 
or  iron,  which  want  no  feeding,  because  they  have  no 
process  of  nutrition  or  expenditure.  The  stranger, 
lighting  on  our  orb,  finds  it  covered  all  over  with 
grasses,  plants,  trees,  animals,  the  waters  full  of  fishes, 
the  air  itself  with  birds.  What  these  living  creatures 
are  and  what  they  are  made  of  he  does  not  know,  but 
he  will  be  greatly  pleased  with  the  wondrously  fresh 
beauty  of  the  landscape,  compared  with  the  dry -faced, 
earth-brown,  mineral  world  he  came  from.  His  atten 
tion  chances  to  be  fixed  on  the  ground,  at  a  spot  where 
he  sees  a  new-looking,  tender-colored  something,  prick 
ing  out,  as  if  coming  up  to  see  the  light.  Sitting  down 
to  watch  the  strange  creature,  and  pondering  it  thought 
fully  in  his  sluggish,  dry  brain  of  asbestos,  our  little, 
quick-whirling  planet  reels  off  a  whole  century  of  years, 
which  to  him  are  only  minutes,  and  behold  the  strange 
thing  greening  in  the  sun,  gets  bulk  and  adds  on 
length  upon  length,  drawing  in  the  charmed  atoms 
from  the  air  and  lifting  up  others  from  the  ground, 
till  finally  a  massive,  full-grown  tree — trunk,  limbs, 
leaves,  and  flowers — stands  built  up  as  a  living  won 
der,  and  hangs  its  wide-spreading  parasol  of  many 
tons  weight  over  his  head  I  Now  he  had  been  a  great 
professor  of  chemistry,  we  may  suppose,  for  some  hun 
dreds  of  years,  in  one  of  the  Dog  Star  universities, 
watching,  all  that  time,  how  the  metals,  and  earths,  and 

23 


266  LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES. 

acids,  and  water  solutions,  and  gases,  operate  in  their 
combinations,  and  what  strange  figures  they  will  some 
times  make,  but  he  has  seen  nothing  like  this.  True  it 
is  only  wood — this  huge-grown  shape — but  what  is 
wood  ?  He  tries  to  think  it,  imagining  it  is  more  in 
the  nature  of  limestone  or  more  in  the  nature  of  gyp 
sum,  or  how  the  fresh  green  covering  may  be  an  efflor 
escence  of  verdigris,  or  an  incrustation  of  malachite, 
and  yet  he  feels  himself  to  be  utterly  at  fault.  And 
then  he  asks,  in  his  confusion,  by  what  strange  spell  is 
this  new  creature  conjured  up?  who  is  the  artist,  or 
magician  ?  what  has  wrought  the  miracle  ?  True  phi 
losopher  that  he  is,  he  must  know  the  secret  of  this 
wonder,  and,  tearing  aside  the  bark  and  hewing  into 
the  woody  trunk,  he  lays  open  to  view  thousands  of 
water-sluices  beautifully  cut,  sees  the  rivers  running  up, 
and  the  rivers  running  down,  but  can  not  guess  by 
what  engine,  worked  by  what  power,  the  perpendicular 
rivers  are  made  to  run.  Out  of  the  flowers  and  the 
fresh  growths,  perfumes  steal  upon  the  sense  of  his 
stony  olfactories,  but  he  asks,  in  vain,  where  is  the  cell 
or  chamber  in  which  the  odors  are  distilled  ?  where  is 
the  apothecary  hid  ?  Sure  there  is  some  spirit  within, 
if  he  could  be  found,  some  invisible  chemist,  hydraul- 
ist,  builder, — by  what  name  shall  he  be  called  ? 

Now  this  Dryad  of  the  tree,  this  hidden  chemist, 
wood-builder,  leaf-painter,  is  Life.  All  the  living 
creatures  are  fashioned  by  the  life  that  is  in  them,  and 
about  this  it  is  that  we  now  undertake  to  inquire. 
What  is  Life,  or  what  are  the  Lives? — this  is  to  be  our 


LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES.  267 

question.     And  the  definition  I  hope  to  establish  is 
this — 


That  Lives  are  immaterial,  soul-like  powers,  organizing 
and  conserving  the  bodies  they  inhabit. 

With  this  definition  corresponds,  more  or  less  nearly, 
the  opinion  of  Hippocrates,  and  that  of  Aristotle 
among  the  ancients,  and  that  of  Van  Helmont,  Stahl, 
Hunter,  Blurnenbach,  and  Miiller  among  the  moderns ; 
some  of  them  calling  Life  the  archeus,  or  governing- 
type  and  architect  of  bodies,  some  the  nisus  formativus, 
or  form-endeavoring  power,  and  all  conceiving  it, 
under  one  name  or  another,  as  being  that  unseen  force 
which  shapes  and  impels  the  growth  of  bodies.  The 
opinions  of  the  side  opposite  I  will  not  stay  to  detail. 
I  will  only  cite  as  a  qualified  representation  of  them,  at 
their  latest  point  of  maturity,  the  statement  of  Dr.  Car 
penter,  in  his  very  thorough  and  able  treatise  on  the 
"Principles  of  Human  Physiology."  "It  is  now  al 
most  universally  admitted,"  he  says,  "by  intelligent 
physiologists,  that  we  gain  nothing  by  the  assumption 
of  some  general,  controlling  agency,  or  vital  Principle, 
distinct  from  the  organized  structure  itself;  and  that 
the  Laws  of  Life  are  nothing  else  than  general  expres 
sions  of  the  conditions,  under  which  vital  operations 
take  place — expressions  analogous  to  those  which  con 
stitute  the  Laws  of  Physics,  or  Chemistry — and  to  be 
arrived  at  in  the  same  manner,  namely,  by  the  collec 
tion  and  comparison  of  phenomena."  "The  collection 
and  comparison  of  phenomena — "  "classification  of  phe- 


268  LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES. 

nomena,"  is  the  common  phrase  of  the  doctrine,  and  it 
is  a  little  relief  to  have  a  change,  if  it  be  only  in  the 
form.  Where  will  be  the  end  of  this  most  incompetent, 
only  half-intelligent  version  of  the  Baconian  philoso 
phy  ?  As  if  the  Laws  of  nature  were  only  collections, 
classifications,  of  facts !  As  if  gravity  were  nothing 
but  the  fact  that  stones  fall  and  bodies  somehow  go  to 
wards  one  another!  As  if  chemical  attraction  were 
nothing  but  the  fact  that  atoms  go  towards  each  other, 
as  many  times  repeated  as  there  are  atoms !  No ! 
gravity  is  the  intellectual  or  idealized  conception  of  a 
power  by  which  bodies  go  towards  each  other,  Chemi 
cal  Attraction  the  conception  of  another  kind  of  power 
by  which  atoms  go  towards  each  other.  And  just  so 
Life  is  the  conception  of  another  and  third  kind  of 
power — a  conception  which  no  mind,  being,  a  mind, 
can  help  forming — by  which  organic  bodies  are  organ 
ized  and  conserved.  And  yet  we  are  told  that  the 
"Laws  of  Life"  are  nothing  but  classifications  of  facts, 
as  the  "Laws  of  Physics  or  Chemistry"  are  nothing 
but  such  classifications.  And  so  it  is  made  to  appear 
that  "  nothing  is  gained  by  the  assumption  of  some 
general,  controlling  agency,  or  vital  Principle,  distinct 
from  the  organized  structure  itself;"  that  living  beings 
can  be  just  as  well  understood  without  considering 
them  to  be  alive — understood,  that  is,  by  their  mere 
structure!  Why  then  does  this  learned  professor  go 
on  to  speak  of  "Life,"  and  "Vital  operations,"  and 
"Functions  of  Life?"  What  are  vital  operations, 
which  suppose  no  vital  principle?  What  are  functions 


LIFE,     OK    THE    LIVES.  269 

of  life,  when  life  itself  is  nothing  but  a  name  for  the 
functions  of  dead  matter  ?  Are  the  functions  of  intelli 
gence  nothing  but  functions  without  intelligence?  or 
do  they  suppose  some  intelligent  power,  whose  func 
tions  they  are  ? 

The  professor  is  confirmed  in  his  mistake,  by 
another,  which  appears  and  reappears  at  many  points 
in  his  very  scientific  and  talented  book.  Thus  he  in 
forms  us  in  the  veiy  next  section,  (§  258,)  that  "All 
vital  phenomena  are  dependent  on,  at  least,  two  sets  of 
conditions ;  an  organized  structure  possessed  of  pecul 
iar  properties,  and  certain  stimuli,  by  which  these 
properties  are  called  into  action."  Take  for  example 
the  seed  of  a  plant,  instanced  by  him  in  another  place. 
It  is  a  nucleus  of  organized  matter.  The  Life  ascribed 
to  it  means  nothing  but  that,  as  a  grain  of  matter,  it  is 
thus  and  thus  organized.  But  it  will  not  grow  simply 
because  it  is  so  organized.  It  must  have  the  stimuli 
of  water,  air,  heat,  soil  and  the  like,  and  these,  acting 
on  the  tissues  of  the  seed,  cause  it  to  grow.  Now  it  is 
very  true  that  these  are  "  conditions  "  necessary  to  its 
growth,  but  the  mistake  is  in  assuming  that  the  condi 
tions  are  causes.  Heat  is  a  condition  of  digestion,  does 
it  therefore  digest  ?  Breathing  is  a  condition  of  writing 
poetry,  does  it  follow  that  the  air  breathed  writes  the 
poetry?  "We  are  dependent  on  ten  thousand  condi 
tions,  in  all  that  we  do,  but  these  conditions  are  not 
causes  of  what  we  do.  No  more  do  the  conditions  re 
ferred  to  cause  the  activity  of  growth  in  a  seed.  It 
grows  because  it  is  alive,  and  has  found  the  conditions 


270  LIFE,     OK    THE    LIVES. 

necessary  to  growth.  And  wlien  these  conditions  are 
called  stimuli,  it  is  only  assuming,  by  a  word,  that  they 
are  the  causes,  when  the  real  causation  is  in  the  Life  it 
self.  The  stimuli  would  have  a  hard  time  with  the 
seed,  I  think,  if  it  was  dead.  Stimuli  for  the -dead  are 
not  efficacious. 

But  the  physiologists  get  a  further  bent  in  this  direc 
tion,  by  what  they  suppose  to  be  a  more  definite  kind 
of  knowledge.  They  distinguish,  in  the  animal  and 
vegetable  economy,  certain  infinitesimal  creatures  of 
life,  which  they  call  "cells."  They  float  in  the  blood 
and  the  sap  and  elsewhere,  elaborating  the  nutritive 
matter,  and  constituting,  as  in  the  egg,  or  the  seed, 
germs  of  nourishment  and  reproduction.  For  these 
cells  of  nutrition,  they  conceive,  and  cells  of  reproduc 
tion,  are  what  feeds  the  growth,  and  molds  the  organ 
ism,  and  keeps  in  a  way  of  development  all  the  species 
and  generations  of  the  living  bodies. 

But  the  cells  themselves  are  just  as  much  alive,  it  is 
agreed,  as  bodies  are,  and  the  question,  whether  it  is 
the  life  of  the  body  by  which  they  are  organized,  or 
they  which  organize  the  body  ?  is  just  as  far  from  settle 
ment  as  ever.  There  is  much  reason  here  to  suspect 
an  imposition.  It  has  required  such  wonderful  acute- 
ness  to  hunt  down  these  infinitesimal  creatures,  distin 
guishing  whence  they  come  and  whither  they  go,  that 
the  investigator  imagines  he  must  now  have  gotten 
hold  of  nature's  last  secret,  even  the  secret  of  life! 
Were  these  organized  specks  as  big  as  peas,  or  walnuts, 
they  would  find  the  question  still  on  hand,  whether 


LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES.  271 

they  were  organized  by  the  life,  or  by  the  mere  struc 
tures  they  nourish  and  propagate?  But  these  are  so 
very  small  that  they  can  not  hunt  them  any  farther. 

Meantime,  there  is  one  great  fact  which  raises  a 
strong  presumption  of  their  relation  to  the  Life  princi 
ple  as  mere  secondaries ;  viz.,  that  the  animal  races  cer 
tainly  were  not  created  originally  as  germs,  but  as  full- 
grown  bodies ;  for  how  could  the  races  of  birds,  for  ex 
ample,  begin  at  the  condition  of  eggs,  with  no  parent 
bird  to  hatch  them  ?  and  how  could  the  young  of  other 
animals  be  kept  alive,  without  their  dams  to  feed 
them?  In  all  which  it  is  clear,  beyond  a  question, 
that  lives  and  full-formed  living  bodies  were  created 
first,  and  had  the  priority  of  all  the  sperm-cell  and 
germ-cell  operations.  The  mere  mineral  world,  unin 
habited  as  yet  by  living  creatures,  could  not  compose 
the  germs  of  any  thing,  and  as  the  animal  races  cer 
tainly  did  not  come  out  of  germs  originally,  we  natu 
rally  believe  that  all  creatures  of  life,  animal  and  vege 
table,  began,  as  creatures,  in  the  full  activity  or  on 
going  of  life. 

At  this  point  much  discussion  was  raised  a  few  years 
ago,  by  Cross,  an  English  experimenter,  who  claimed 
that,  by  passing  a  current  of  galvanism,  for  some 
months,  through  the  liquor  of  flints,  he  produced  living 
insects.  But  his  experiment  found  little  credit.  His 
supposed  insects  were  accounted  for,  by  the  fact  that 
the  water  and  the  air  are  filled  with  innumerable  seeds 
of  plants  and  eggs  of  insects,  some  of  which  he  was 
able  to  hatch,  and  nothing  more.  When  such  an  ex- 


272  LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES. 

periment  really  succeeds,  physiology  itself  will  be  down, 
and  we  shall  be  obliged  to  go  back  to  the  mineral 
world  and  its  chemistry  for  the  germinal  spring  of  all 
organized  bodies.  Propagation  by  structure  is  just  as 
truly  superseded  as  propagation  by  the  vital  force. 

Thus  far,  we  have  been  occupied  controversially. 
Let  us  go  back  now  to  our  definition,  and  verify  it,  by 
a  more  positive  exhibition  of  Life  in  its  effects  and  inci 
dents. 

My  definition  supposes  that  Lives  are,  in  some  sense, 
immaterial  and  have  a  soul-like  nature.  This  impres 
sion  will  be  more  and  more  distinctly  verified  as  we 
proceed  with  the  illustrations  now  to  be  given ;  for  I 
shall  conduct  you,  if  you  follow  me,  into  a  marvelous 
world,  back  of  our  material,  corpuscular  philosophy, 
where  creatures  busy  as  angels  and  like  them  invisi 
ble  save  by  their  works,  are  ever  employed  in  building, 
repairing,  actuating,  and  reproducing  their  multiform 
bodies;  with  a  power  over  matter  and  all  chemical 
affinities,  as  affinities  of  matter,  which  is  only  the  more 
sublime,  that  it  appears  to  be  a  sovereignty  from  with 
out,  superior  to  all  forces  within. 

Observe  then,  first  of  all,  the  mysterious  sovereignty 
of  the  vital  forces  over  the  forms  of  living  bodies  al 
ready  existent.  Every  man,  for  example,  changes  the 
whole  matter  of  his  body  many  times  during  his  life. 
We  look  upon  it  as  remaining  the  same,  recognize  it  by 
its  color  and  form  as  being  the  identical  body  we 
looked  upon  years  ago.  The  man  himself  has  a  fixed 


LIFE,     OK    THE    LIVES.  273 

impression  of  this  identity.  And  yet  his  body  is  more 
like  a  river  running  by.  than  like  a  body  remaining 
constant  in  the  constancy  of  its  material.  It  is  not 
like  a  crystal  where  the  form  is  cast  by  the  law  of  the 
matter  itself,  and  remains  because  the  matter  remains. 
On  the  contrary,  a  living  body  takes  up  new  matter, 
and  throws  off  old  matter,  and  the  matter  it  takes  up 
for  one  year  is  different,  even  in  kind,  from  the  matter 
it  took  up  the  year  previous,  and  yet  the  body  remains 
the  same;  keeps  up  all  its  angles  colors  and  looks, 
showing  no  perceptible  shade  of  difference.  The  river 
of  its  matter  keeps  every  dimple  and  eddy  of  the  sur 
face  just  as  it  was  whole  years  ago.  In  all  which  we 
perceive,  as  plainly  as  possible,  that  there  is  some  force, 
sovereign  over  the  matter,  which  stays  by,  more  con 
stant  than  the  matter,  to  give  it  a  shape  of  its  own,  and 
keep  it  in  the  outward  show  of  constancy.  And  this 
hidden  power  must  be  immaterial ;  for  it  is  not  any  law 
of  the  matter,  but  a  power  coming  down  upon  matter 
to  configure  it  always  to  itself.  It  is  therefore  called 
the  nisus  formativus  by  Blumenbach  and  others,  and 
pertains,  if  not  to  the  matter,  to  the  Life-Principle  it 
self. 

But  the  Physiologists  of  the  school  just  referred  to, 
have  it  for  their  answer,  that  the  structure  is  kept  up 
by  the  structure,  the  form  by  the  form.  It  begins, 
they  say,  with  a  germ  having  all  the  rudimental  ducts 
and  tissues  of  the  future  body,  which  ducts  and  tissues 
guide  all  the  accruing  matter  of  growth  or  nutrition  to 
its  place,  and  so  perpetuate  themselves  and  the  shapes 


274  LIFE,     OK    THE    LIVES. 

of  the  body.  All  which  is  so  far  true  as  that  they  are 
the  media,  or  means,  by  which  the  result  is  accom 
plished.  But  media,  or  means  are  not  powers,  but 
only  that  by  which  some  power  acts ;  which  power  is, 
in  this  case,  the  life.  Ducts  and  tissues,  taken  as  mere 
matter  thus  and  thus  posited,  are,  by  the  supposition, 
only  mechanical  textures  and  arrangements — able,  in 
themselves,  to  do  nothing,  least  of  all,  any  thing  by 
which  they  may  reproduce  themselves.  Or  if  we  take 
them  as  chemical  arrangements,  like  the  plates  of  a  bat 
tery,  they  can  have  no  action  but  a  chemical  action  de 
structive  to  themselves.  If  they  might  possibly  de 
compose  the  food  given  them  to  act  upon,  they  could 
only  turn  it  into  its  chemical  products,  or  equivalents ; 
they  could  not  make  one  fibre  of  flesh  out  of  it,  or  even 
so  much  as  a  grain  of  genuine  bone.  Still  less,  having 
varieties  of  food  to  act  upon,  could  they  manage  to  be 
always  recomposing  the  same  body.  A  seed,  for  ex 
ample,  contains  a  grain  of  matter,  mechanically  and 
chemically  adjusted.  How  can  that  grain  of  matter — 
carbon,  potash,  hydrogen,  water,  and  the  like — manip 
ulate  whole  tons  of  other  carbon,  potash,  hydrogen, 
and  water,  as  in  the  growth  of  a  tree?  shaping  that 
growth,  from  year  to  year,  and  when  it  is  broken  by 
storms,  or  felled  upon  the  ground,  reconstruct  the 
house  it  was  building,  ducts,  tissues,  and  all,  so  as  to 
compose  a  new  shape  different  from  the  first?  Mech 
anism  and  the  chemistry  of  dead  matter  can  do  no  such 
thing.  Put  in  the  life  and  you  have  a  power  that  is 
adequate. 


LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES.  275 

Or,  we  may  take  a  different  illustration.  Cut  off  the 
head  of  a  snail,  and  the  body  will  grow  out  another 
head.  Cut  in  two  a  little  water  animal  called  the  hy 
dra,  and  the  head  part  will  grow  out  a  tail,  and  the  tail 
part  a  head.  Do  the  ducts  and  tissues  then  of  the  head 
contain  the  future  ducts  and  tissues  of  a  tail,  and  those 
of  the  tail  contain  those  of  a  head  ?  How  little  does  it 
signify  to  say  that  structure  and  form,  in  such  cases, 
keep  good  structure  and  form!  How  can  head-struc 
ture  make  tail-structure,  and  tail,  head  ?  The  solution 
gets  no  show  of  reason,  till  we  conceive  some  vital 
force  invisible,  dwelling  equally  in  both  the  head  and 
the  tail,  which  wants  a  complete  body  and  formatively 
endeavors  after  such  a  body.  And  this  soul-like  force, 
called  the  Life,  formless  in  itself  because  immaterial, 
has  yet  a  formative  instinct  natural  to  its  activity, 
which,  as  it  inhabits  and  works  in  matter,  weaves 
every  tissue  of  its  body,  animal  or  vegetable,  directs 
every  particle  of  matter  where  it  shall  go,  only  using 
the  structural  order  for  its  means,  shapes  every  limb, 
colors  every  hair,  or  feather,  or  leaf,  and  presides  in  all 
the  living  forms,  as  the  conserving  principle  of  con 
stancy  and  kind.  The  bees  in  their  hive  are  not  more 
sovereign  over  the  wax,  than  are  these  wonderful  life- 
powers  over  the  structures  they  build.  And  it  might 
as  well  be  imagined  that  the  cells  themselves  account 
for  the  honey,  and  also  for  the  cells  of  the  next  year. 
as  that  the  form  of  a  plant,  or  of  a  human  bod}^, 
is  nourished  and  kept  good  by  its  mere  structural  func 
tions. 


276  LIFE,    OR    THE    LIVES. 

I  assume  it  then,  without  further  debate,  that  all  liv 
ing  bodies  are  organized  and  conserved  by  lives,  opera 
ting  in  and  through  the  structural  machinery  of  their 
parts,  or  of  their  germs.  Every  life  has  a  kind  pecul 
iar  to  itself,  and  wants  a  form  to  live  in,  which  it  has 
power  given  it,  under  certain  conditions,  to  construct 
and  maintain — the  life  of  a  man  a  man's  body,  the  life 
of  a  tree  a  tree's  body,  the  life  of  a  bird  a  bird's  body. 
"We  look  about  us  in  the  populous  domain  of  air  and 
earth  and  water,  and  see  the  matter  whirling,  so  to 
speak,  in  eddies  of  vital  activity,  taken  up  and  given 
out,  growing  and  decaying,  assisting  now  in  the  struc 
ture  of  a  man's  brain,  a  short  time  ago  breathing  in  the 
leaves  of  forests  and  blossoming  in  the  flowers  of  prai 
ries,  and,  a  short  time  before  that,  slumbering  in  the 
vegetable  mold  of  soils  made  fertile  by  its  contributions. 
A  year  hence,  liberated,  or  getting  a  respite  from  the 
fearfully  hard  work  it  is  put  to,  in  carrying  on  the 
thinking  of  a  brain,  it  will  speed  away  as  a  gas  let 
forth  to  have  a  holiday  in  the  grand  circulation  of  uni 
versal  nature,  and  will  next  be  taken  up  by  all  the 
lives  of  all  the  elements,  and  will  go  darting  in  the 
fishes,  roaring  in  the  lions'  throats,  and  buzzing  in  the 
wings  of  insect  life  all  round  the  world.  The  lives 
themselves  endure  but  for  a  time,  but  are  a  great  deal 
more  constant  than  the  clay  they  vitalize,  and  wield 
their  sovereignty  over  it,  as  long  as  they  stay,  by  the 
commission  they  hold  from  Him  who  rejoices  in  their 
beautiful  and  beauty-making  activity. 

We  come  now  to  a  class  of  illustrations  where  the 


LIFE,     OE    THE    LIVES.  277 

distinctness  of  lives  from  all  mere  qualities  and  powers 
of  matter  will  be  more  easily  seen,  and  will  be  as  much 
more  clearly  indisputable.  I  speak  of  the  points  in 
which  they  triumph  over,  and  subordinate  to  their 
uses,  all  the  known  laws  of  inorganic  matter. 

Thus  it  is  a  known  law  of  matter,  and  of  all .  ma 
chines,  however  nicely  constructed  out  of  matter,  that 
they  are  under  a  law  of  inertia,  or  that  being  at  rest 
they  will  remain  so,  unless  put  in  motion  by  some  force 
or  cause  that  is  not  in  themselves.  Matter  and  mech 
anism  have  no  power  to  begin,  or  carry  on  a  course  of 
activity  themselves.  Take  the  seed  once  more  for  an 
illustration.  Call  it  a  mere  structure,  mechanically  and 
chemically  formed.  Place  it  in  the  ground,  and  there 
it  will  lie,  as  quiet  a  lump  as  Prospero's  island,  sown  in 
the  sea  "  to  bring  forth  more  islands."  The  water  of 
the  ground  will  soak  it,  and  the  heat  will  warm  it,  but 
it  will  only  be  a  lump  of  matter,  a  structural  machine, 
soaked  and  warmed,  and  the  motions  of  a  growing  pro 
cess  will  no  more  be  started  in  it,  by  so  much  water 
and  heat,  than  if  it  were  a  watch  planted  in  the  same 
manner.  We  do  indeed  say,  in  common  familiar  lan 
guage,  that  the  seed  will  be  started.  But  we  mean,  if 
we  understand  ourselves,  not  that  so  much  water  and 
heat  break  the  inertia  by  their  impulsion — that  is  in 
conceivable,  for  they  have  no  impulsion  more  than  the 
seed-matter  itself— we  only  mean  that  the  Life,  before 
inert,  takes  occasion  from  its  favoring  conditions  and 
commences  the  circulating,  growing,  motion  from  itself. 
We  regard  the  seed,  in  other  words,  not  as  a  mere  com- 

24 


278  LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES. 

pounded  lump,  or  structure,  but  as  having  Life,  a 
power  not  under  conditions  of  inertia  at  all,  a  power 
which  does  not  move  simply  as  being  moved,  but  as 
being  self-active  in  its  own  nature. 

And  just  so  it  is  with  all  the  going  on  of  a  living 
body,  after  the  activities  of  its  living  state  are  begun. 
By  its  frictions  and  other  expenditures  it  would  soon 
exhaust  its  powers  of  activity,  and  drop  into  the  state 
of  inertia,  like  a  spent  rocket  falling  to  the  ground,  if 
it  were  not  for  the  continuing  forces  of  the  life,  by 
wrhich  its  activities  are  renewed.  No,  say  the  advo 
cates  of  mere  structure  and  chemistry,  the  body  only 
takes  in  new  matter,  by  its  feeding  and  breathing,  by 
receiving  more  light,  and  heat,  and  electricity,  and  the 
chemical  forces  thus  contributed  keep  the  machine  still 
agoing.  I  hardly  know  how  to  speak  with  due  respect 
of  a  theory  that  makes  a  very  little,  almost  tiny,  amount 
of  science  go  so  far,  and  solve  a  problem  of  such  won 
derful  complexity.  Take  a  human  body,  fibered,  vas- 
culated,  innerved,  articulated,  digesting,  secreting,  ab 
sorbing,  breathing,  circulating,  carrying  on  even  thou 
sands  of  distinct  operations,  at  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  distinct  points,  all  necessary  to  each  other,  so  that 
when  some  tiny  process,  never  perceived  by  man,  slips 
its  duty  and  the  proportionate  working  is  but  a  little 
changed,  the  equilibrium  called  health  is  overset — con 
ceive  all  this,  then  conceive  that  this  multifarious  world 
of  operative  powers  plays  on,  still  on,  asleep  and  awake, 
for  sixty  or  a  hundred  years,  mastering  heat,  and  cold, 
and  breakage,  in  a  thousand  forms;  whereupon  the 


LIFE,     OK    THE    LIVES.  279 

chemist,  who  has  gotten  hold  of  a  few  simple  laws  of 
inorganic  matter,  tells  you  that  he  can  solve  it;  that 
we  take  in  food  and  the  food  put  into  the  structure,  as 
a  machine,  makes  force  and  carries  on  the  play  and  re 
places  the  waste,  and  that  so  the  machine  keeps  every 
thing,  even  the  machine  itself,  in  order,  proportion,  and 
prolonged  operation!  The  body  is,  in  this  view, 
nothing  but  a  laboratory,  gotten  up  with  just  so  many 
parts  as  there  are  functions,  and  they  all  play  together, 
making  it  a  body.  Carry  out  the  figure,  now,  and  see 
what  is  in  it.  The  chemist  has  a  laboratory,  full  of 
vials,  bottles,  acids,  alkalies,  all  manner  of  simples,  and 
all  manner  of  salts,  with  combustibles,  and  fires,  and 
galvanic  batteries,  and  force-pumps,  and  gasometers,  in 
short,  a  little  universe  of  chemical  substances  and  ma 
chineries.  Now  his  doctrine  of  the  body  is  just  as  if, 
connecting  all  these  vessels,  and  substances,  into  a 
chemical  circle,  by  pipes,  and  pumps,  and  sponges,  and 
wire-conductors,  and  going  to  his  digester,  he  were  to 
put  in  there  three  times  a  day  a  loaf  of  bread,  which 
has  in  it  such  a  wonderfully  wise-acting  set  of  forces, 
that,  passing  into  the  grand  circuit  of  the  laboratory,  he 
imagines  it  to  keep  all  the  parts  in  play  and  sound  con 
dition — the  vials  just  as  full  as  they  were  and  of  the 
same  substance,  the  galvanic  batteries  eaten  up  by  the 
acids  still  sound  and  good  as  before,  the  combustibles 
going  off  in  gases  replaced  by  new  combustibles,  the 
ices  dissolved  replaced  by  freezing,  and  the  vapors 
thrown  off,  by  condensing,  and  even  the  iron  digester 
itself  renewed  in  the  wear,  by  the  nourishing  force  of 


280  LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES. 

the  bread  that  is  dissolved  by  it.  What  a  magnifi 
cently  preposterous  solution  is  this  to  be  offered  in  the 
name  of  science !  And  yet  the  same  kind  of  solution 
put  upon  the  body,  with  such  easy  complacency,  is  at 
least  a  hundred  times  more  preposterous,  as  the  body- 
laboratory  is  at  least  a  hundred  times  more  complex. 
Now  it  is  very  true  that  living  bodies  require  food — 
food  is  the  material  on  which  they  work ;  it  is  also  true 
that  a  man  wants  a  little  more  food  when  he  is  in  a 
great  stress  of  labor,  than  when  he  is  doing  nothing, 
but  it  certainly  is  not  true  that  men  have  their  capaci 
ties,  bodily  or  mental,  graduated  by  their  consumption 
of  nutriment.  Steam-boilers  are  graduated  in  their 
force  exactly  in  that  way,  but  not  living  bodies.  No, 
we  get  no  real  conception  of  a  living  body,  till  we  see  a 
chemist  in  it,  a  power  of  life  that,  like  a  reigning  in 
stinct,  dominates  in  every  part  as  a  revivifying  princi 
ple,  sending  into  every  member  and  function  just  the 
matter  wanted  to  keep  it  good,  and  vitalizing  all  by  the 
play  of  its  own  self-active  nature.  Now  the  body  is  no 
more  a  mere  machine,  no  longer  under  the  law  of  iner 
tia,  because  it  has  an  architect,  preserver  and  impeller, 
operating  all  its  functions,  and  making  it  a  living 
creature.  Call  it  wheels,  if  you  please,  call  it  this,  or 
that,  or  all  instruments  of  machinery,  still  you  under 
stand  it  not,  till  you  see  the  spirit  of  the  living  creature 
in  the  wheels. 

We  pass  now  to  another  point  that  is  less  difficult ; 
viz.,  the  triumph  of  the  life-power  over  the  force  of 
gravity.  Here  we  have  it  as  a  great  law  of  matter 


LIFE,    OR    THE    LIVES.  281 

that  every  particle  tends  towards  every  other,  and 
thus  all  surface  particles  towards  the  earth's  center. 
Bat  a  bird,  beating  on  the  air,  lifts  its  body  against 
gravity.  An  elephant,  resting  on  the  ground,  wills  to 
rise,  and  forthwith  his  enormous  bulk  is  seen  lifting  it 
self  upward  more  speedily  even  than  a  small  steam- 
engine  could  do  it,  with  all  needful  ropes  and  pulleys. 
True,  he  does  it  by  his  will  contracting  his  muscles, 
and  so  far  mechanically.  But  how  were  the  muscles 
contracted?  By  a  single  thought  of  his  living  brain, 
running  out  as  a  fiat  into  his  massive  body.  And  that 
fiat  of  the  vital  force  has  the  sovereignty,  thus  far, 
over  gravity.  Take  also  a  case  where  the  function  of 
will  is  less  apparent — the  case  of  a  seed  erecting  itself 
into  a  tree,  one  of  the  great  trees  of  California,  for  ex 
ample,  twenty-five  feet  in  diameter,  and  four  hundred 
and  fifty  feet  high.  A  part  of  the  matter,  it  is  true,  is 
not  lifted  from  the  ground,  but  is  gathered  from  the  air 
itself.  As  regards  the  part  carried  up  in  the  sap  of  the 
tree,  possibly  the  body  of  the  tree,  consisting  of  a 
bundle  of  capillary  tubes,  may  be  imagined  to  carry  up 
such  quantities  of  water  and  food,  by  the  mechanical 
force  called  capillary  attraction.  But  a  dead  tree  has 
the  same  capillary  tubes  as  a  living,  why  then  does  not 
the  sap  ascend  in  a  dead  tree?  Besides  it  has  been 
found  by  an  experiment  that  is  fatal  to  this  conjecture, 
that  a  grape-vine,  cut  off  in  the  spring,  will  force  up  a 
column  of  sap  against  a  superincumbent  column  of 
water  forty-three  feet  high.  This  prodigious  pressure 
upward,  exceeding,  by  one-third,  the  pressure  of  our  at- 

24* 


282  LIFE,     OK    THE    LIVES. 

mospliere,  has  little  resemblance,  it  must  be  agreed,  to 
capillary  attraction.  Dismissing  this  solution,  we  are 
left  in  a  degree  to  conjecture.  Perhaps  the  result  is  ac 
complished  by  alternate  contractions  and  dilatations, 
too  delicate  to  be  perceptible,  in  the  veins  of  the  wood ; 
or  it  may  be  accomplished  by  similar  contractions  and 
dilatations  in  the  little  sponges  at  the  ends  of  the  roots. 
In  either  case,  the  machinery  is  played  by  the  life- 
power  of  the  tree,  as  the  heart  by  the  life-power  of  the 
human  body.  Be  the  solution  what  it  may,  this  at 
least  is  clear,  that  gravity  has  been  somehow  mastered, 
and  that  no  mere  laws  of  matter  can  account  for  it. 

Again  the  laws,  or  conducting  forces  of  heat,  are 
mastered  in  the  same  way.  Every  living  creature  tries 
to  keep  its  equilibrium  in  respect  to  heat.  Thus  Hun 
ter  found  that  the  heart  of  a  living  tree,  when  the  at 
mosphere  was  below  56°,  was  higher  than  the  atmos 
phere,  and  as  much  lower,  when  it  was  below  56°.  A 
dead  tree  meantime  conforms  to  the  temperature  of  the 
atmosphere.  I  transplanted  a  cherry-tree  in  my 
grounds,  some  years  ago,  doing  it  too  late  in  the 
season.  About  the  beginning  of  August  it  rallied 
and  put  forth  its  leaves,  and  having  now  a  whole  sum 
mer's  work  to  do  to  get  its  buddings  ready  for  the  next 
year,  the  poor  thing  still  kept  on,  tugging  patiently 
against  the  frosts  of  autumn,  holding  every  leaf  in  its 
green,  long  after  all  other  trees  around  it  were  bared  as 
in  winter.  Dismissing  any  conceit  of  poetic  sympathy 
which  might  try  to  endow  it  with  a  will,  it  is  certainly 
not  incredible  that  having  its  acme  of  life-power,  late  in 


LIFE,     OK    THE    LIVES.  283 

the  season,  it  asserted  itself  against  the  frosts  longer 
than  the  other  trees  could.  Enough  that  it  lives  to 
boast  its  victory.  One  of  the  most  inert  forms  of  life  is 
the  egg.  Still  it  is  found  that  a  dead  egg,  or  one  that 
has  been  killed  by  freezing,  will  freeze  in  a  much 
shorter  time  than  a  live  one  exposed  to  the  same  cold. 

Now  the  chemists  are  much  pleased  with  the  sup 
posed  discovery  that  the  equilibrium  of  heat,  main 
tained  by  animal  bodies,  may  be  accounted  for  by  the 
mere  chemical  laws  of  matter.  Passing  by  other 
subordinate  causes  alleged,  they  show,  first,  that  in 
breathing,  we  take  in  oxygen  into  the  lungs,  where  it 
unites  with  the  carbon  principle  of  the  blood,  and  then 
that,  by  the  outgoing  breath,  we  throw  it  off  as  car 
bonic  acid  gas — exactly  what  takes  place  in  the  com 
bustion  of  wood,  or  coal ;  where  the  fire  is  carbon 
uniting  with  oxygen,  and  the  smoke  is  principally  car 
bonic  acid  gas.  The  lungs,  in  this  view,  are  a  real  fire 
place  in  the  body  and  by  that  central  fire  the  body  is 
kept  warm.  But  it  happens  that  we  sometimes  want  to 
be  cooled,  in  order  to  have  our  equilibrium ;  as  when  the 
fireplace  heat  of  the  lungs,  added  to  the  summer  heat 
without,  would  make  us  uncomfortable.  And  here  the 
body  forthwith  dews  itself  all  over  with  perspiration, 
which  liquid  moisture,  passing  into  vapor,  takes  up  a 
thousand  degrees  of  latent  heat  from  the  body,  and  car 
ries  it  off,  leaving  the  body  cooled  and  comforted  by 
the  change.  Yes,  gentlemen,  your  fireplace  and  evap 
orator  do  belong  to  the  body,  and  they  operate  in  the 
precise  way  alleged.  But  there  are  one  or  two  ques- 


284  LIFE,    OR    THE    LIVES. 

tions  that  remain,  where  your  philosophy  quite  breaks 
down.  In  this  fireplace  of  the  lungs,  you  have  a  fire 
that  burns  at  96°  of  heat,  will  you  explain  how  that  is 
done  ?  what  is  it  here  that  puts  oxygen  to  combining 
with  carbon,  at  the  temperature  of  96°?  You  have 
oxygen  and  carbon  at  your  command,  will  you  show 
us  how  their  chemical  union,  making  carbonic  acid 
gas,  can  be  accomplished  by  the  laws  of  the  two  sub 
stances,  at  this  low  temperature  ?  This  you  say  is  a 
fire,  can  you  make  such  a  fire  chemically  in  your  labo 
ratory?  No,  the  life-principle  is  the  magician,  or 
priest,  that  marries  these  two  elements,  and  does  it  by 
its  own  sovereignty — you  can  not  do  it  by  any  laws  of 
matter  that  you  know.  You  come  back  thus,  after  all, 
to  the  life  and  that  it  is,  you  will  see,  that  makes  the 
fire. 

That  also  it  is,  you  will  perceive,  that  operates  your 
cooling  process.  The  water  perspired  and  then  evapo 
rated  is  the  means  employed,  just  as  your  solution  sup 
poses,  but  the  question  still  remains,  why  does  the  per 
spiration,  or  exudation  of  moisture,  come  out  when  it 
is  wanted  ?  Taking  one  of  our  familiar  expressions  for 
a  literal  truth,  you  may  imagine  that  the  heat  itself 
brings  it  out.  But  that  is  impossible.  Heat  will  bring 
out  steam  from  a  moist  body  but  never  water  to  be 
evaporated  afterwards.  The  question  for  you  is,  what 
power  brings  forth  the  water  as  water?  for  on  that 
everything  depends.  A  log  of  moist  wood  will  not 
perspire,  neither  will  a  dead  body.  Why  then  does  a 
living?  Because  the  Life-Power,  superintending  the 


LIFE,    OR    THE    LIVES.  285 

gates  of  the  skin,  sends  the  moisture  out  when  it  is 
wanted,  acting  as  it  were  by  some  wise  instinct,  or  un 
conscious  reason,  for  the  comfort  and  conservation  of 
the  body. 

"We  come  now  to  a  wider  field  of  wonders,  where  the 
Lives  are  seen  to  be  triumphing,  at  all  points,  over  the 
chemical  affinities  of  matter ;  acting  each  as  a  chemist 
in  his  own  right,  and  constructing,  in  this  manner,  sub 
stances  that,  under  the  mere  laws  of  inorganic  matter, 
could  never  exist.  All  the  animal  and  vegetable  sub 
stances  have  thus  an  imposed  chemistry,  a  chemistry 
not  in  the  matter  as  such,  but  put  upon  the  matter,  by 
the  lives  working  in  it.  Each  Life,  in  fact,  has  a 
chemistry  of  its  own,  and,  coming  down  thus  "upon  mat 
ter,  it  composes  substances  of  its  own.  The  vegetable 
lives  begin,  soiling  over  the  otherwise  mineral-faced 
world  with  the  rich  black  mold  they  contribute  by 
ages  of  growth  and  decay ;  the  animals  follow,  living 
on  the  vegetables  and  upon  each  other ;  and  all  go  on 
together,  making,  each,  their  own  kind  of  substance — 
such  as  no  chemist  can  make;  such  as  by  the  mere 
laws  of  inorganic  chemistry  can  not  begin  to  exist; 
such,  in  fact,  as  God  himself  never  made,  save  in  the 
first  living  creatures  organized  by  His  power. 

The  article  sugar,  for  example,  is  a  vegetable  pro 
duct,  and  is  constituted  by  the  union  of  carbon,  oxy 
gen,  and  hydrogen.  But  no  chemist  can  unite  these 
three  elements,  and  produce  the  substance  called  sugar. 
He  can  decompose  sugar,  and  show  what  elements  are 
in  it,  but  he  can  not  invert  the  process;  for  the  ele- 


286  LIFE,    OB    THE    LIVES. 

ments  have  no  law  of  union  in  themselves,  of  which  he 
can  avail  himself.  He  can  unite  hydrogen  and  oxygen, 
and  produce  water ;  he  can  unite  oxygen,  nitrogen,  and 
potash,  and  produce  saltpetre.  But  no  one  of  all  the 
vegetable  and  mineral  substances  can  he  produce.  Lig- 
nin,  tannin,  acids,  oils,  perfumes,  poisons,  nutritive  and 
healing  products — not  one  of  these  can  he  compose  by 
his  utmost  art.  The  Life-power  of  the  beet,  the  maple, 
the  sugar-cane,  coming  down  upon  the  refractory  atoms, 
imposes  a  chemistry  upon  them  they  have  not  in  them 
selves,  and  so  contributes  to  our  comfort  this  article  of 
sugar.  And  just  so  it  is  that,  by  a  kind  of  sorcery  in 
Lives,  all  the  immense  products  necessary  to  our  build 
ing,  clothing,  and  feeding  processes,  are  prepared.  The 
poor  chemist  follows  after,  and,  trying  his  hand  upon 
matter,  is  able  to  produce  no  one  of  them.  It  is  as  if 
there  were  some  spell  upon  things,  which  he  can  not 
understand ;  or  as  if  the  lives  had  power  to  set  matter 
whirling  by  their  magic  touch,  and  were  showing  him 
their  freaks  of  skill  to  mock  his  perplexity.  Colors 
blush  out  that  he  can  not  make,  odors  fly  whose  secret 
he  can  not  guess.  Substances  are  grown  which  he 
could  as  easily  create  a  world  as  make.  All  his  ex 
periments  show  him  that  tbe  science  he  delights  in 
makes  him  master  only  of  the  chemistry  of  death,  and 
he  gives  up  in  despair.  The  lives  that  swarm  about 
him  are  all  so  many  chemists,  wiser,  every  one,  and 
mightier,  in  a  sense,  than  he. 

I  must  not  omit,  in  this  connection,  to  name  one  sin 
gular  attribute  of  lives,  in  this  field  of  chemistry,  which 


LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES.  287 

reveals  a  prerogative  scarcely  credible;  viz.,  this,  the 
power  to  make  different,  widely  different,  substances, 
out  of  exactly  the  same  material  in  exactly  the  same 
proportions.  Thus  it  is  laid  down  even  by  Liebig,  that 
animal  fibrin,  and  animal  gelatin,  and  animal  casein, 
and  vegetable  fibre,  albumen,  casein,  and  gluten,  have 
all  exactly  the  same  analysis.  In  the  same  way  starch, 
gum,  and  cane-sugar,  have  precisely  the  same  elements, 
in  precisely  the  same  proportions,  different,  as  they  cer 
tainly  are,  in  their  tastes  and  properties.  Almost  any 
man,  I  think,  would  say  that  this  is  impossible;  and 
yet  the  best  chemists  are  obliged  to  agree  that  so  it  is. 
What  can  be  more  distinct  to  the  taste  and  in  the  prop 
erties  of  use,  than  starch  and  sugar?  It  is  as  if  some 
immaterial  property  went  over  to  the  product,  giving 
it  a  quality  from  the  life,  that  stays  by  and  makes  it 
different,  while  the  matter  is  the  same.  But  we  hardly 
know  what  we  mean,  when  we  make  the  suggestion. 
It  signifies  principal^  that  we  are  utterly  confused  and 
lost  in  the  chemical  mysteries  of  life. 

Having  shown,  by  these  illustrations,  on  how  large 
a  scale  the  lives  are  found  subordinating  the  properties 
and  laws  of  inorganic  matter,  we  will  look  at  them 
finally  in  a  little  more  direct  aspect,  considering  what 
they  are  in  themselves. 

It  is  one  of  the  grand  distinctions  of  man,  as  a  free 
being,  that  he  acts  from  himself  and  not  as  a  being 
caused  to  act.  On  this  account,  or  in  virtue  of  this 
prerogative,  he  is  responsible.  Now  the  lives  are  all 
types  of  man  in  this  highest  point  of  his  nature;  for 


288  LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES. 

they  all  act  from  themselves,  as  truly  as  man,  only  they 
do  it  instinctively  and  not  by  will.  The  human  heart, 
for  example,  does  not  go  because  physical  impulsions 
of  any  kind  are  on  it,  for  there  are  no  such  impulsions ; 
but  it  goes  because  the  life  is  a  causative  nature  in  it 
self,  and  plays  the  machinery  of  the  pulse  by  its  own 
spontaneous  sovereignty.  So,  when  a  seed  quickens 
in  the  ground,  it  is  not,  as  we  have  seen,  because  stimuli 
begin  to  play  upon  it  there,  mechanically  or  chemically, 
that  it  quickens,  puts  its  pumps  in  motion  and  prepares 
to  raise  a  tree.  There  is  no  mechanical  force  in  the 
ground,  and  no  chemical,  that  can  start  a  growth- 
motion  of  any  kind.  All  we  can  say  is,  that  the  life- 
power  of  the  seed,  having  found  the  fit  conditions,  be 
gins  to  act  from  its  own  instinctive  force,  and  puts 
agoing  all  the  circulations  of  growth  from  itself.  It 
takes  hold  of  matter,  thus,  as  a  dynamic  outside  of 
matter  and  its  laws,  and,  acting  from  itself  all  its  life 
long,  dominates  over  the  chemistries,  composes  and 
goes  on  composing  the  forms  of  matter  it  wants  for  its 
uses,  never  yielding  to  the  causations  of  matter  till  it 
dies.  Here  then  we  have,  in  the  lives,  a  striking  re 
semblance  to  souls.  'They  have  no  intelligence,  no 
will,  no  consciousness,  and  yet  they  are  all  powers  out 
side  of  matter,  acting  upon  it  from  a  causative  nature 
in  themselves. 

They  have  also  another  point  of  relationship  to 
souls,  in  what  may  be  called  their  perceptive  and  ad 
just!  ve  instinct.  We  speak  of  the  instinct  of  animals, 
that  by  which  the  crow  builds  its  nest,  that  by  which 


LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES.  289 

the  bees  construct  their  comb,  anticipating,  as  it  were, 
in  the  six-sided  figure  of  their  cells,  the  mathematical 
problem,  which  shows  that  six-sided  prisms  are  the 
figure  that  has  the  largest  containing  power,  with  the 
least  surface,  yet  packing  in  a  solid  body.  Just  so 
there  is  in  the  lives  an  instinct,  answering  to  intelli 
gence,  though  not  intelligent.  They  construct  tissues 
and  textures  that,  put  in  the  microscope,  are  more  won 
derful  in  their  order,  a  thousand  times,  than  the  order 
of  the  hive.  Let  any  one  but  look  through  the  plates 
of  a  late  treatise  on  physiology,  and  he  will  be  aston 
ished  by  the  revelations  of  the  lives  there  exhibited. 
When  a  living  body,  animal,  or  vegetable,  is  wounded, 
there  is  seen,  at  once,  to  be  a  wondrous  instinct,  a  hid 
den  nurse,  of  self-preservation  in  it.  A  battered  rock,  or 
broken  crystal,  stays  broken,  unable  to  think  of  repair. 
But  the  life,  in  such  a  case,  begins  forthwith  to  nurse 
its  violated  body,  tends  and  cleanses  the  wound  suf 
fered,  casts  off  the  dead  matter,  deposites  new  growths 
on  all  sides  of  the  breach,  knits  together  the  lacerated 
fibres  and  tissues  by  a  process  that  no  human  surgery 
can  even  trace,  and  thus  restores  the  original  soundness. 
We  have,  in  our  salt  waters,  a  little  animal  called  the 
borer.  He  lies  in  the  mud  and  lets  down  a  long  pro 
boscis  with  a  file  on  it,  till,  by  various  trials,  he  finds  a 
small  round  clam  which  is  to  be  his  prey.  He  selects 
the  thinnest  part  of  the  shell  and  commences  there  a 
process  of  filing,  to  make  his  way  through.  A  friend 
of  mine  once  showed  me  a  shell  thus  attacked  by  the 
borer,  in  which  the  inhabitant  inside,  taking  note  of  the 

25 


290  LIFE,     OR    THE     LIVES. 

filing  on  the  outside,  began,  at  once,  to  secrete,  or  de- 
posite,  a  new  thickness  of  shell  to  keep  his  enemy  off. 
And  here  it  was,  a  newly  completed  counterscarp, 
drawn  across  the  breach  two  or  three  lines  inward, 
which  the  borer  had  also  to  break,  before  he  could 
reach  his  prey!  Here  you  see  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation  acting  even  prophetically,  and  preparing 
to  repel  future  injury.  And  this  again  must  be  taken 
as  an  instinct  of  the  life ;  for  the  animal  concerned  is  an 
animal  without  a  head,  and  therefore,  if  phrenology  be 
true,  not  very  well  off  for  intelligence. 

It  is  only  another  form  of  the  same  general  fact,  that 
the  lives  appear  to  have  instincts  of  perception  and  of 
measurement.  Thus  a  tree  which  is  fond  of  water, 
when  planted  near  some  brook,  will  set  off  all  its  prin 
cipal  roots  in  that  direction.  How  does  it  know  the  " 
water  to  be  there?  And  how  does  it  know  that  it  will 
be  able  to  reach  the  border  of  it  ?  To  say,  in  popular 
phrase,  that  the  water  attracts  the  roots  in  that  direc 
tion,  is  to  invent  a  new  and  very  remarkable  sort  of 
attraction.  An  attraction  that  pulls  at  roots  in  the 
ground,  and  turns  them  at  the  point  of  starting,  is  a 
something  created  to  account  for  the  fact  in  question, 
which  is  even  more  difficult  than  the  fact  itself.  Mr. 
Madison,  for  example,  had  an  aqueduct  of  logs  which, 
in  reaching  his  house,  passed  by  a  tree  specially  fond 
of  water,  at  a  considerable  distance  from  it.  Abreast 
of  the  tree  there  was  an  auger-hole  in  the  log  that  had 
been  filled  with  a  plug  of  soft  wood.  Exactly  thither 
ward  the  tree  sent  off  a  long  stretch  of  roots,  which 


LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES.  291 


forced  their  way  through  the  plug,  choking  up  the 
passage,  and  were  found  there  drinking  like  so  many 
thirsty  animals.  Was  it  then  the  soft  wood  plug  that 
attracted  these  roots?  It  certainly  should  be  on  the 
attraction  principle;  for  the  water  was  just  as  near  at 
other  points  as  here. 

It  is  said  that  a  strawberry  planted  in  sand,  with 
good  earth  a  little  way  off,  will  turn  its  runners  all  in 
the  latter  direction,  and  that  if  the  good  earth  is  too  far 
off  to  be  reached,  the  plant  will  make  no  effort  on  that 
side  more  than  on  the  other,  which  is  equivalent  to 
saying  that  the  plant  has,  in  its  life-principle,  an  in 
stinct  of  measurement.  It  does  not  measure  the 
ground  and  then  itself,  and  then  compare  the  two,  but 
it  has  an  adaptive  power  by  which,  without  compari 
son,  it  graduates  its  action  by  its  possibilities. 

Pass  now  to  another  point,  where  the  relationship  of 
lives  to  souls  is  presented  in  a  still  higher  form  of  inter 
est.  I  speak  here  of  the  probability  that  they  are  all 
enjoying  creatures.  As  regards  the  animal  races  which 
people  the  air,  and  the  earth,  and  the  waters  of  the  sea, 
there  appears  to  be  no  room  for  doubt — their  perpetual 
hum,  and  chirp,  and  song,  and  gambol,  and  feeding,  are 
themselves  the  tokens  of  enjoyment.  The  vegetable 
creatures  are  not  commonly  supposed  to  have  any  such 
capacity,  and  the  physiologists  add,  as  a  reason,  that 
they  have  no  nerve  or  nervous  center  to  make  them 
conscious  of  joy.  But  the  argument  is  good,  if  at  all, 
only  as  regards  the  consciousness  of  joy,  not  as  regards 
the  joy  itself.  The  little  child  is  a  joyous  being,  tin- 


292  LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES. 

gling  even  with  joy,  we  may  say,  as  with  fullness  of 
life;  but  lie  is  not  conscious  to  himself  of  his  joy. 
Health  itself  is  joy,  and  yet  it  is  a  kind  of  joy  so  nearly 
unconscious,  that  one  of  our  best  writers  lays  it  down 
as  a  maxim,  that  no  man  is  in  perfect  health  who  even 
knows  that  he  is  well.  Indeed  there  is  strong  reason 
to  believe  that  life  itself,  clear  of  all  hindrance  and  dis 
ease,  is  an  essentially  joyous  power,  though  of  course 
unconscious.  Besides,  applying  all  this  to  the  account 
of  vegetable  life,  there  are  a  good  many  plants  that  are 
called  sensitive,  because  they  give  tokens  of  sensation, 
and  others  that  keep  up  a  constant  oscillating,  or  vi 
brating  motion.  And  yet  again  what  human  sensi 
bility  can  resist  the  impression,  beholding  the  fresh 
greening  of  the  landscapes,  the  bright,  gay  pencilings 
of  the  flowers,  and  visited  by  the  odors  they  distill  in 
their  lives,  that  they  are  creatures,  all,  essentially  joy 
ous;  fair  as  in  the  form,  fragrant  as  in  the  exhalation, 
of  joy.  Hence  the  profound  sympathy  we  have  with 
their  beauty — -they  give  us  joy,  as  being  in  the  sense  of 
their  feeling. 

What  a  computation  have  we  then  of  joy  in  the  lives 
of  the  world.  The  navigator,  for  example,  sails 
through  a  red  brown  sea,  even  for  a  week,  and  this 
colored  element  gets  its  dye,  as  he  may  learn,  from  a 
reddish  insect  tenanting  such  regions  of  space,  at  the 
rate  of  piobably  a  hundred  millions  to  the  cubic  foot. 
The  coral  islands  and  reefs,  extending  in  the  sea  for 
thousands  of  miles,  are  only  vast  cities  of  life,  built  up 
in  the  water,  forts  compared  with  which  the  Sumpters 


298 

and  all  others  built  by  man  are  only  pebbles.  The 
very  earth,  too,  as  Ehrenberg  discovered,  is  in  whole 
provinces  of  the  world,  composed  of  little  flint  shells. 
These  shells  were  before  supposed  to  be  only  grains  of 
sand,  but  he  found  them  to  be  tenanted  by  lives,  which 
are  still  going  on  at  their  work  of  sand-making  as  busy 
as  ever.  Then  in  the  vegetable  growths  by  which  the 
world  itself  is  carpeted  and  studded  with  forest  shades, 
every  plant,  every  spear  of  grass,  every  hair  of  mold,  is 
a  life,  and  the  air  even  of  the  planet  is  scented  with 
their  breath.  The  seeds  of  life,  such  as  those  for  ex 
ample  of  the  mold,  are  flying  everywhere  in  it,  invisi 
ble,  so  that  every  darkest  cave  or  cavern  is  a  city  more 
populous  even  than  London  or  Thebes,  and  waiting 
only  for  the  fit  occasion  to  spring  into  natural  activity. 
ISTow  this  boundless  wave  of  Life  that  covers  the 
world,  we  have  little  room  to  doubt,  is  in  some  high 
sense  a  wave  of  joy.  We  look  upon  the  creatures  of 
life  as  they  breathe,  and  feed,  and  grow,  as  they  climb, 
or  leap,  or  fly,  or  sing,  and  take  them  all  together  as 
the  children,  conscious  or  unconscious,  in  either  case, 
the  happy  children,  of  Him  who  hath  Life  in  Himself, 
and  runs  out  the  pulses  of  His  joy  to  throb  in  them  all. 
The  green  carpeted  earth,  the  air  scented  by  their  odors, 
the  very  sky  filled  with  their  gambols  and  the  ring  of 
their  music, — these  are  their  carnival.  A  stately  joy 
waves  in  the  giant  wood.  The  ebbing  and  flowing  sea 
pants  with  the  joys  of  life  that  are  heaving  in  its 
depths.  Even  the  sands  of  the  old  continents  tingle 
with  the  touch  of  joy. 

25* 


294  LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES. 

Having  now  gone  over  the  field  prescribed,  it  only 
remains  to  speak,  as  briefly  as  possible,  of  the  ends  or 
objects  for  which  the  subject  has  been  -undertaken. 

In  asserting  the  immaterial  quality  of  lives,  I,  of 
course,  do  not  assert  any  thing  positive,  or  any  thing  to 
hang  a  conclusion  upon,  respecting  any  thing  else,  I 
only  mean  that  they  are  un-material,  as  regards  all  the 
known  properties  and  laws  of  matter.  But  if  we  add 
to  this  the  fact  of  their  self-active  nature  and  their 
power  to  subordinate,  on  a  large  scale,  the  chemical 
and  mechanical  forces  to  their  sovereignty,  we  bring 
into  thought  an  element  powerful  enough  to  affect  even 
radically  the  bent  of  the  world's  mind,  and  so  to  oper 
ate  important  results,  not  only  in  the  department  of 
natural  science,  but  also  in  metaphysics  and  the  philos 
ophy  of  religion,  as  well  as  in  the  faith  and  imagin 
ative  literature  of  the  world.  We  need  only  note 
how  gravity,  chemical  attraction,  electricity,  the  laws 
of  heat  and  vapor,  have  entered  the  domain  of  thought, 
altering  even  the  method  of  speculation,  to  see  what  life 
would  do,  coming  into  full  recognition,  to  qualify  the 
prepossessions  and  change  the  modes  of  human  opinion. 
It  makes  the  world,  in  feet,  another  world,  filling  it 
with  other  and  more  quickening  analogies. 

How  it  would  affect  physiology,  in  all  its  branches, 
has  been  obvious  in  the  general  course  of  these  illustra 
tions.  Indeed,  if  some  physicians  were  to  only  get 
hold  of  the  true  idea  of  life  as  a  power  distinct  from 
the  laws  of  inorganic  matter,  they  would  be  as  much 
less  likely  to  make  inorganic  matter  of  their  patients. 


LIFE,     OK    THE    LIVES.  295 

And  the  supposed  science  of  phrenology,  conceiving 
life  as  a  power  organizing  and  conserving  the  bodies  it 
inhabits,  would  begin  to  suspect  that,  not  the  head 
only,  but  the  whole  body,  down  to  the  very  foot  and 
heel,  expresses  the  volume  and  spirit  and  quality  of 
the  man.  Conceiving  it  too  as  a  self-active  power, 
having  causations  of  its  own  upon  the  body,  more  than 
the  body  reactions  upon  it,  the  boasted  science  would 
begin  to  look  out  some  place  or  possibility  for  a  will, 
free  will,  better  than  to  represent  all  human  actions  as 
the  resultants  of  compound  forces  in  the  brain,  or  de 
coctions  of  some  forty  brain-vessels  simmering  out  a 
joint  product.  The  greatest  fact  of  humanity,  the  in 
nate  sense  of  responsibility,  would  possibly  get  some 
room  thus  in  the  science  and  some  right  to  exist,  better 
than  it  has  in  the  apothecaries'  kettles  and  crucibles. 

In  the  same  way  a  great  theologian,  like  Jonathan 
Edwards,  writing  a  treatise  on  the  will,  might  be  able, 
under  the  analogies  of  the  self-active,  originally  causa 
tive  powers  of  life,  to  make  a  little  more  adequate  ac 
count  of  it,  than  he  does  under  the  analogies  of  weights 
and  scale-beams.  His  magnificent  puzzle  might  never 
have  been  contrived ;  but  the  chances  of  human  respon 
sibility  might  have  been  as  much  greater  in  the  world, 
as  the  chances  of  this  kind  of  sophistry  were  less.  It 
has  been  the  great  misery  of  theology,  in  fact,  that  it 
has  always  been  trying  to  solve  the  relations  of  God 
and  man  as  relations  of  cause  and  effect,  not  perceiving 
that,  while  this  might  be  a  very  good  way  of  accounting 
for  the  changes  of  a  dead  body,  it  never  is  for  the 


296  LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES. 

changes  of  a  living  body,  least  of  all  for  the  actions  of  a 
living,  choosing  man.  The  school  of  Scotch  metaphy 
sicians  and  theologians,  coming  in  with  and  after  the 
wondrous  revelations  of  chemical  analysis,  were  still 
farther  diverted  from  the  right  modes  of  inquiry,  by 
the  analogies  of  the  chemical  method.  They  could 
think  of  nothing  but  analysis ;  to  raise  distinctions,  to 
divide,  to  atomize  the  soul  by  distinctions,  was  now  to 
be  the  better  way  of  knowledge.  And  the  result  of 
their  better  method  was  just  what  it  must  be;  for  it  is 
the  grand  distinction  of  a  soul,  as  of  all  life,  that  it 
makes,  not  a  summation  of  parts  like  a  rock,  but  a 
whole,  in  which  all  the  parts  condition  each  the  others, 
in  such  a  sense  that  one  can  not  be  without  the  others. 
Their  analysis  therefore  was  a  kind  of  analytic  murder, 
and  the  man  it  showed  was  a  dead,  dissected,  man,  not 
a  living.  It  gave  us  for  the  real  Cassar  the  ashes  of 
Caesar's  urn ;  or  better  still  it  gave  us  a  manikin  for  a 
man.  The  refinements  were  disappointments,  and  the 
new  knowledge  opened  .was  a  waste  of  sands.  The 
same  atomizing  method,  passing  into  theology,  made  a 
like  dry  waste  of  that.  It  reduced  the  man  to  pieces 
and  the  truth  to  pieces,  contriving  then  to  show  how 
the  pieces  of  the  truth  act  on  those  of  the  man,  and 
how  the  pieces  of  the  man  act  on  those  of  the  truth ; 
how  the  causes  produce  effects,  and  the  heavier  weights 
preponderate,  and  which  is  before  and  which  is  after — 
in  which  it  fell  out,  as  it  must,  that  the  man  died  of  his 
treatment,  and  the  truth  died  also,  and  the  operations 
of  both  were  nowhere.  It  will  be  impossible  for  any 


LIFE,    OR    THE    LIVES.  297 

metaphysical,  or  religious  thinker,  to  stay  in  this  desert 
long,  after  he  has  once  got  insight  of  the  lives,  and 
drawn  himself  to  their  sympathy.  Passing  into  broth 
erhood  with  these,  a  finer  and  wholly  different  class  of 
influences  will  be  upon  him.  Trying  no  more  to  think 
the  soul  by  its  parts,  under  laws  of  causation,  he  will 
think  it  as  a  whole,  a  self-active,  glorious,  living  whole, 
recognizing  its  deep  mystery,  interpreting  it  by  its 
wants  and  feelings  and  responsible  choices,  swayed  by 
reasons  and  not  by  forces,  akin  by  its  nature  to  all 
truth  and  beauty  and  God,  perfectible  only  in  a  perfect 
liberty. 

Under  this  kind  of  method,  or  influence,  the  ten 
dency  to  all  sorts  of  radicalism  and  religious  unbelief 
will  be  removed;  for  all  these  varieties  of  mischief 
come  of  the  endeavor  to  solve,  by  the  laws  of  inorganic 
matter,  subjects  that  are  not  inorganic  matter,  but  dif 
ferent  as  possible  from  it. 

The  civil  state,  for  example,  what  is  it,  as  many 
reason,  but  an  after-thought  and  artificial  contrivance 
of  mankind, — a  contract,  or  compact,  in  which  the 
members,  in  a  computation  of  advantage,  agree  to  sur 
render  some  of  their  individual  rights,  and  accept  the 
will  of  the  majority,  so  far,  as  law !  This,  therefore,  is 
the  fundamental  conception  of  liberty  and  all  rightful 
government.  No,  far  from  that  as  possible ;  the  whole 
scheme  is  a  string  of  misconceptions.  Individuals  had 
never  any  civil  functions  to  surrender.  Majorities  had 
never  any  natural  right  of  authority.  The  true  concep 
tion  is  that  civil  society  is  a  genz,  or  nation,  under  the 


298  LIFE,     OK    THE    LIVES. 

analogies  of  growth ;  a  form  of  nascent  order,  having, 
under  God,  its  own  historic  life,  by  which,  as  a  nisus 
formativus,  it  will  be  conserved  and  governed.  This, 
too,  is  its  constitution ;  and  it  makes  no  difference 
whether  it  is  written,  or  unwritten ;  for  if  it  be  written, 
it  is  only  a  transcript  of  the  regulative  instincts  and 
elements  previously  developed  by  its  life  and  history. 
It  may  be  hereditary,  or  elective,  parliamentary,  or  im 
perial  ;  it  has  a  divine  right  in  one  form  as  truly  as  in 
another,  if  only  it  rules  historically,  and  not  mechani 
cally.  It  is  like  the  coral  banks  of  the  sea,  which  are 
representations,  at  once,  of  vital  freedom  and  historic 
life.  And  as  the  coral  insects  make  no  complaint, 
when  finding  how  their  personal  liberty  is  taken 
away  by  the  framework  of  their  rocky  casement,  or 
constitution,  but  rather  feel  that  if  they  were  thrust 
out  of  it  to  live,  each  one  by  itself,  in  the  open 
sea,  they  would  lose  both  their  liberties  and  their 
bodies,  so  it  may  as  well  be  with  man,  under  the  frame 
of  civil  order  constructed  by  the  organic  life  of  their 
history — protected,  thus,  and  made  more  free,  instead 
of  surrendering  half  their  natural  liberties  to  save  the 
remainder,  as  some  of  our  crude,  atomizing  theories  of 
social  compact  are  wont  to  assume. 

And  so  again  of  reforms.  They  contemplate  the  fact 
that  organic  society  is  somehow  diseased.  If  then  a 
body  grows  a  rheum,  or  a  carbuncle,  does  the  physician 
hew  it  to  pieces  and  get  up  another,  or  does  he  make 
applications,  and  administer  alteratives,  appealing  to 
the  life  it  still  has,  and  contriving,  in  that  manner,  to 


LIFE,     OK    THE    LIVES.  299 

work  the  desired  amendment?  So,  then,  if  the  rights 
of  labor  fare  badly,  under  the  selfish  and  diseased  ac 
tion  of  society  and  capital,  that  radicalism  which  pro 
poses  to  crush  out  society  and  build  up  a  new  civil  or 
der,  trusting  nothing  to  the  mitigations  of  law,  and  the 
infusions  of  social  justice,  or  Christian  brotherhood,  is  a 
wisdom  that  works  in  the  molds  only  of  force  and  me 
chanical  repair,  not  in  those  conservative  methods  that 
belong  to  the  vis  medicatrix  of  life.  All  such  radicals 
get  their  logic  from  the  laws  of  inorganic  matter ;  and 
falling  to  work  at  society,  as  if  it  were  dead,  they  take 
the  surest  means  to  make  it  so. 

But  we  pass  to  the  matter  of  religious  unbelief,  and 
the  immense  difference  it  makes,  in  all  the  tendencies 
of  religious  opinion,  whether  it  is  tempered  by  the 
analogies  of  life,  or  wholly  dominated  by  the  modes  of 
inorganic  matter.  Taking  matter  and  its  laws  for  na 
ture,  and  asserting  the  absolute  uniformity  of  cause  and 
effect  under  these  laws,  Christianity  is  no  longer  credi 
ble  ;  there  is  no  place  left  for  miracle,  or  for  any  super 
natural  visitation  of  God.  But  when  the  lives  are  dis 
covered  as  beings  that  are,  in  no  sense,  properties  of 
matter ;  when  we  see  them  proved  by  their  effects  to 
be  profoundly  real — real  as  gravity  and  not  a  whit 
more  mysterious  as  regards  their  substantial  nature — • 
when  we  see  inertia,  heat,  chemical  affinity,  gravity  it 
self,  all  the  laws  of  dead  matter  submitted,  on  a  large 
scale,  to  their  sovereignty,  we  are  set  in  a  mood  that  is 
wholly  different.  We  are  ready  to  believe  in  forces 
outside  of  matter  and  superior  to  it,  for  indeed  we  do 


300  LIFE,    OB    THE    LIVES. 

already.  There  is  thus  a  kind  of  spirit- world  to  us  in 
nature  itself,  preparing,  as  it  were,  beginnings  of  faith, 
by  the  sublime  mastery  it  wields.  The  transition  to  a 
faith  in  supernatural  beings  and  events  is  thus  made 
easy.  For,  if  the  vegetable  lives  can  sway  the  mineral 
properties,  if  the  animal  can  sway  the  vegetable,  if  the 
intelligent  personal  minds  can  master  both,  then  how 
far  from  being  incredible  is  it,  that  a  being,  coming  into 
the  world  from  without  and  above,  can  make  all  things 
bend  to  his  diviner  will  and  sovereignty,  and  yet  in 
such  a  way  as  to  involve  no  subversion  of  order. 

In  this  manner,  too,  we  are  prepared  to  a  steadier 
and  more  confident  opinion  of  the  immortality  of  souls. 
How  real  the  soul-powers  are  in  their  self-activity  we 
have  seen  by  worlds-full  of  examples — real  enough  in 
their  humblest,  tiniest,  forms,  to  do  what  all  the  chem 
ists  can  not,  aided  by  all  the  known  powers  of  matter 
and  its  laws. 

Is  it  then  assumed  that  what  we  call  the  soul  in  man 
is  really  one  and  the  same  with  his  life  principle  ?  It 
has  been  common  to  raise  a  distinction  between  the 
body-soul  or  life,  and  the  spirit-soul,  and  there  certainly 
is  a  distinction  of  functional  activity  correspondent 
with  these  terms ;  a  distinction  which,  indeed,  appears 
in  the  scriptures.  But  the  distinction  referred  to  may 
be  regarded  as  pertaining  to  one  and  the  same  sub 
stance,  or  as  requiring  two  different  substances.  On 
this  point  Baxter  and  other  Christian  teachers  of 
different  schools  have  not  been  forward  to  decide.  I 
will  only  suggest  that  multiplying  substances  and 


LIFE,    OR    THE    LIVES.  301 

causes  where  there  is  no  need  of  it,  is  unphilosophical. 
And  there  is  the  less  reason  for  it  here,  that  the  lives 
of  the  world  appear  in  so  many  grades.  First  we  have 
the  unconscious,  next  the  conscious,  then  the  voluntary 
and  locomotive,  then  the  half-intelligent  and  contriving, 
then  the  responsible  and  free ;  so  that  if  we  make  a  sep- 
ation  of  soul  and  spirit,  as  being  distinct  substances,  we 
shall  certainly  be  found  to  include  under  spirit  some 
things,  at  least,  which  belong  to  mere  animate  natures 
under  their  life  principle.  On  the  whole,  it  seems 
better  to  regard  the  body-soul  or  life,  in  man,  as  being- 
one  and  the  same  substance  as  the  spirit  or  religious 
principle;  only  having  lower  functions,  by  which  it 
lays  hold  of  matter,  fashioning  a  body,  and  functions 
more  transcendent  by  which  it  knows  and  appropriates* 
God. 

But  the  Lives  all  die,  why  not  then  the  soul-principle 
of  man,  which  we  are  agreeing  to  regard  as  being  one 
and  the  same  as  his  life  ? 

To  this  I  answer,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  reality 
of  the  soul  is,  in  this  view,  greatly  augmented.  It  is 
no  longer  any  ghostly  affair,  which  may  or  may  not  be, 
but  it  is  the  very  power  that  organizes  and  conserves 
the  body,  real  as  the  body,  whose  growths  and  palpita 
tions  even  are  operated  by  it. 

Then,  as  regards  the  evidence  of  immortality,  a  wide 
distinction  is  made  between  it  and  all  other  of  the  lives, 
that  they  are  only  servitors  to  it,  existing  plainly  for 
its  sake,  and  not  for  their  own.  They  take  the  world 
as  a  world  of  mere  mineral  substance  on  which  man 


302  LIFE,     OK    THE    LIVES. 

could  not  live,  and  have  it  given  them  as  their  office, 
to  prepare  and  furnish  it  for  his  use.  They  carpet  and 
color  the  landscapes  for  his  eye ;  they  decompose  the 
corrupted  atmosphere,  and  give  him  the  liberated  oxy 
gen  for  his  breathing.  They  fall  to  composing  new 
substances  for  his  uses  and  trades ;  spinning  the  fibres 
of  flax,  cotton,  silk,  and  wool  for  his  clothing ;  growing 
forests  for  his  fuels  and  timbers;  composing  gums, 
spices,  fruits,  grains,  meats,  and  medicines,  for  his  food 
and  healing ;  building  stout,  powerful  bodies,  and  swift 
also,  for  his  carriers  and  couriers;  and,  what  is  spe 
cially  significant,  doing  nothing  for  themselves,  and  all 
for  him,  as  the  lord-life,  owner,  planter,  propagator 
of  them  all.  And  so  the  mineral  earth,  on  which  he 
would  otherwise  die,  is  prepared  to  a  state  of  habitable 
order,  and  bounty,  and  beauty,  for  his  uses — not  for  the 
uses  of  his  body  only  but  quite  as  much  of  his  mind ; 
for  he  could  not  even  have  a  language  based  on  min 
eral  roots  alone,  that  would  express  his  sentiments  and 
the  feelings  and  workings  of  his  heart  as  a  creature  of 
religion.  How  little  then  does  it  signify,  as  regards 
the  question  of  his  immortality,  that  these  inferior  lives 
are  mortal,  when  he,  as  a  life,  holds  an  order  so  visibly 
transcendent?  As  little  does  it  signify  that  he  dies 
himself,  as  respects  his  connection  with  a  body,  for  we 
can  see  for  ourselves,  that  the  soul-force  of  his  nature 
gathers  volume  and  majesty,  long  after  the  body  has 
culminated ;  giving,  in  that  fact,  the  sign  that  what  we 
call  his  death  is  but  the  leave-taking  and  final  gradua 
tion  of  his  immortalitv. 


LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES.  303 

Besides,  we  have,  in.  the  instinctive  working  of  these 
lower  lives,  the  strongest  of  all  external  arguments  for 
the  immortality  of  man.  Thus  we  have  seen  that  roots 
which  love  the  water  have  a  kind  of  instinctive  percep 
tion,  which  turns  them,  even  at  whole  rods  of  distance, 
to  run  in  that  direction;  also  that  the  humble  straw 
berry  goe*s  after  the  good  earth  near  it,  by  a  similar  in 
stinct  of  life ;  both  measuring,  in  a  sense>  the  reach  of 
their  own  faculty,  and  starting,  or  withholding,  as  they 
find  themselves  able,  or  not,  to  succeed.  But  of  all 
these  inferior  lives  there  is  not  one  that  reaches  after 
permanence,  or  gives  any,  the  faintest,  token  that  it 
measures  itself,  or  its  aims  and  aspirations,  by  immuta 
ble  ideas.  This  belongs  to  man  alone.  In  his  con 
science  he  feels  the  touch  of  immutable  right ;  by  his 
reason  he  is  made  akin  to  geometry,  number,  time, 
space,  cause,  and  all  necessary  ideas ;  his  will  is  an  au 
tocratic  force,  superior  to  all  conditions;  his  deepest 
wants  of  feeling  and  desire,  are/the  hunger  of  his  nature 
reaching  after  God,  as  the  only  sufficient  food,  the  un 
changing  good  and  beauty  of  the  world — all  the  cur 
rents  of  his  life  pour  on  after  eternity,  as  the  rivers  seek 
the  sea!  What  then  shall  we  conclude,  but  that, 
measured  by  the  reach  of  his  instincts,  he  is  himself  an 
eternal  creature?  Or,  if  the  blind  root  can,  by  some 
wondrous  method,  discern  the  water  through  many  feet 
of  earth,  how  shall  it  surprise  us,  that  the  sublimer 
faith -instinct  of  man,  can  truly  see  those  immortal 
waters,  towards  which  the  roots  of  his  being  do  so  man 
ifestly  run. 


304  LIFE,    OR    THE    LIVES. 

And  then,  beside  all  this,  to  shorten  the  argument 
down  to  its  true  point,  every  human  soul  is  conscious 
of  its  immortality,  knows  it  by  an  immediate  knowl 
edge,  takes  the  permanent  by  its  own  inborn  affinities, 
never  lets  go  of  it  or  loses  out  the  fixed  evidence  of 
conviction,  till  it  has  blurred  itself  by  the  sottishness,  or 
beguiled  itself  by  the  sophistries  of  sin. 

One  thing. more  remains  to  be  suggested;  viz.,  the 
immense  contribution  that  is  made,  both  to  religion, 
and  the  higher  wants  of  genius,  by  the  due  understand 
ing  of  lives.  There  is  no  such  culture  as  this  for  the 
imagination ;  for  it  is  a  kind  of  culture  that  disposes  at 
once  to  faith,  and  to  all  purest  exaltations  of  feeling  and 
fancy.  There  is,  I  know,  a  contrary  prejudice.  In 
deed,  I  have  heard  an  American  scholar  turning  that 
prejudice  into  an  oration,  in  which  he  said,  for  sub 
stance — "  why  should  the  poor  child's  mind  be  drugged 
with  facts  and  curiosities  of  science?  Let  him  hear 
the  stories  of  elfs,  sprites,  fairies,  goblins,  and  good  fel 
lows;  let  him  read,  for  true  histor}^,  if  he  will,  the 
Arabian  tales  and  weave  them  into  his  dreams ;  teach 
him  faith  in  this  manner,  and  quicken  his  poetic 
fancy ;  but  above  all  do  not  begin  with  your  primers 
of  natural  history  and  bring  him  up  among  the  beasts." 
Now  that  a  conceited,  unbelieving,  and  therefore  un- 
beautiful,  soul,  will  be  fashioned  by  the  habit  of  ac 
counting  for  all  things,  by  the  laws  and  calculable 
forces  of  dead  matter,  I  most  certainly  agree.  But  the 
wisdom  of  the  proposed  remedy  is  not  so  obvious.  The 
soul  of  a  child  thus  fed  on  "gorgons  and  chimeras 


LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES.  305 

dire  "  will  be  only  a  den  of  superstition  if  he  believes 
them,  or  if  he  finally  outgrows  the  opinion  of  their  re 
ality,  they  will  only  have  done  what  was  possible  to 
make  him  a  skeptic  and  Sadducee.  The  truth  is  that 
all  hot-bed  measures  to  force  the  imagination  will  only 
grow  a  green-house  plant,  that  can  not  even  live  in  the 
outdoor  winds,  and  under  the  fires  of  the  sun.  The 
imagination  is  no  genuine  power,  save  when  it  is  the 
flaming  out  in  thought  of  fires  that  must  be  so  vented, 
and  would  otherwise  suffocate  in  the  soul.  Faith,  too, 
is  the  sister  of  beauty,  and  the  only  real  poetry  is  truth. 
Yain  study  is  it,  therefore,  this  endeavor  to  give  wings 
to  a  soul,  when  it  has  not  gotten  life  enough,  in 'its 
thought,  to  want  them.  Let  it  be  enough  to  educate 
the  eye,  and  sharpen  the  appetite  for  a  keen  observa 
tion — unfolding  all  the  other  powers,  meantime,  by  a 
downright,  solid,  matter-of-fact  training.  And  then  as 
the  soul  gets  force  enough  to  grapple  with  the  internal 
meanings  and  mysteries  of  things,  let  it  look  in  here 
upon  the  lives,  for  these  will  do  more  to  vitalize 
thought  and  give  it  wings,  than  all  the  mythologic  fic 
tions  of  the  world.  Here  it  will  be  entered  into  a  realm 
of  spirit-creatures,  more  delicate  than  fays  and  fairies, 
with  the  advantage  that  they  are  real — real  enough  to 
play  their  tricks,  at  will,  on  the  stupid  matter  and  its 
laws.  These  fantastic  immaterialities  it  will  find 
swarming  in  all  grades  and  dimensions,  between  micro 
scopic  motes,  and  the  giants  of  the  forest  and  the  levia 
thans  of  the  sea,  reducing  all  substances  between  the 
stubborn  flint  and  the  fluid  air,  and  working  out  their 

26* 


306  LIFE,    OK    THE    LIVES. 

magic  spells,  in  ceaseless  transformations  that  exceed 
even  the  fables  of  romantic  story.  Nature  ceases,  in 
this  manner,  to  be  a  mere  sand-bottom  or  platform  of 
rock  and  becomes  a  circle  of  joyous  life — a  perpetual 
Midsummer's  Night  Dream,  without  either  dream  or 
fiction  in  it.  And  these  mute,  unreasoning  artists, 
fellow  in  a  sense  to  mind,  come  into  its  feeling  and 
marry  it  to  nature,  by  such  delicate  ties  of  sympathy 
and  brotherhood,  as  quicken  it  to  insight,  exalting,  at 
once,  the  philosophical  understanding,  and  refining  the 
poetic  life. 

Things  above  sense,  the  reverend  mysteries  of  God 
and  religion,  now  throng  about  the  man,  firing  his  im 
agination  and  challenging  a  ready  faith.  Having 
passed  within  the  rind  of  matter,  and  by  its  mechanical 
laws,  and  discovered,  there,  a  more  potent,  multitudin 
ous,  self-active,  world  of  life,  his  higher  affinities  are 
wakened,  drawing  him  away  to  the  common  Father, 
whose  life  is  in  him,  as  in  them,  and  to  those  meditations 
of  the  future  otherwise  faint  and  dim  in  their  evidence. 
Of  if,  perchance,  he  remembers  that  all  these  creatures 
die  and  are  no  more,  a  feeling  is  by  this  time  generated, 
which  can  no  more  be  chilled,  of  his  own  self-asserting 
immortality.  So  that  when  the  autumnal  frosts  have 
changed  the  world's  green  look,  and  the  pale  nations  of 
the  forest  leaves,  hang  withering,  or  fly  their  stems, 
loosened  by  the  w-indy  blasts,  he  will  call  them  with 
the  poet — "pestilence  stricken  multitudes,"  and  the 
sympathy  yielded  to  the  drooping  spirits  of  creation 
will  only  have  softened  his  own,  preparing  that  gentle- 


LIFE,     OR    THE    LIVES.  307 

ness  in  him  which  belongs  both  to  faith  and  to  genius. 
But  the  courage  of  his  immortality  stays  firm,  for  well 
he  knows,  that  when  the  green  myrmidons  of  spring 
appear,  to  gladden  again  the  earth,  it  will  be  to  him  as 
the  opening  of  the  gate  "Beautiful"  over  all  graves, 
and  that,  being  now  a  life  again  among  the  lives  of 
May,  singing  with  them  that  sing,  and  rejoicing  in  the 
new-born  joy  of  all,  it  will  only  be  his  impulse  to  say, 
wThat  before  he  believed, — "The  resurrection  and  the 
Life." 


VIII. 

CITY  PLANS.* 


THE  topic  assigned  me,  this  evening,  is  the  Planning 
of  Cities.  You  will  understand,  of  course,  that  I  am 
not  required,  in  the  handling  of  my  topic,  to  make  out 
the  plan  of  any  particular  city,  or  to  model  a  general 
plan  for  all  cities.  There  is  no  absolute  plan  for  cities, 
and  no  city  can  be  well  planned,  as  the  duplicate  of 
another.  Moreover  it  is  seldom  that  any,  except  some 
paper  city  of  speculation,  is  planned  wholly  beforehand. 
A  very  few  have  been,  but,  commonly,  beginnings  are 
made  first,  which  grow  into  some  more  definite  and 
more  extended  plan  afterwards.  And  yet  the  begin 
nings  made  and  the  growths  or  extensions  that  come 
after,  would  commonly  be  very  different,  if  only  there 
could  be  on  hand  a  little  better  culture,  in  regard  to  the 
ideas  and  principles  involved  in  the  best  and  most  taste 
ful  arrangement  of  cities. 

And  here,  exactly,  is  the  object  of  our  present  in 
quiry  ;  it  is  to  set  on,  or  promote,  this  kind  of  culture — 

*  Prepared  for  the  Public  Improvement  Society  of  Hartford,  but  for 
reasons  of  health  postponed  and  not  delivered. 


CITY    PLANS.  309 

to  unfold  the  regulative  ideas  of  the  subject,  to  contrib 
ute  suggestions,  state  the  ends  and  objects  to  be  sought, 
sharpen  the  attention  of  criticism,  and  bring  out,  as  far 
as  possible,  the  laws  of  construction  by  which  the  com- 
pletest  and  most  attractive  city  may  be  built.  And  the 
importance  of  a  well-formed  power  of  criticism,  in  this 
field,  is  much  greater  than  many  will,  at  once,  perceive. 

Thus  if  some  of  you  should  ask  what  considerable 
interest  you  can  have,  as  citizens  of  an  old  established 
city  or  town,  in  such  a  subject  as  this,  I  answer  that  it 
is  a  matter  of  some  consequence,  or  ought  to  be,  that 
you  should  have  impressions  not  absurd  of  your  own 
city  itself — its  defects,  advantages,  and  capabilities — for 
if  it  should  happen  that  you  live  your  time  out  here, 
complaining  all  your  life-long  of  the  best  points  in  it, 
deploring  to  your  last  day  the  impossibility  of  remov 
ing  just  the  things  which  are  its  finest  merits ;  working, 
it  may  be,  in  the  city  council,  to  roll  up  bills  of  expense 
for  alterations  that  were  really  better  not  to  be  made ; 
and  finally  dying  a  little  before  your  time,  because  the 
city  plan  will  not  square  itself  to  your  false  notions  of 
taste  and  order ;  it  would  seem  that  a  more  cultivated 
taste  and  a  juster  view  of  the  subject  and  the  laws  by 
which  it  is  governed  were,  at  least,  desirable.  I  will 
further  add  that  exactly  what  I  speak  of  here  is  a 
matter  of  common  occurrence,  and  I  could  name  at  least 
a  dozen  points  in  the  arrangement  of  our  city,  about 
which  serious  regret  is  even  commonly  expressed, 
which  are  yet,  in  reality,  among  the  best  points  in  it. 

Furthermore,  the  impressions  you  make  of  yourselves, 


310  CITY    PLANS. 

by  the  crudity,  or  sound  maturity  of  your  judgments 
in  this  particular  matter,  would  seem  to  have  a  consid 
erable  degree  of  consequence.  Thus,  if  you  were 
called,  some  time,  to  show  the  city  to  a  stranger  of  dis 
tinction,  in  a  ride  about  its  localities,  and  he  should 
find  you  pleased  most  often  with  what  is  a  most  certain 
deformity,  and  most  ready  to  deplore  what  a  little  more 
culture  would  as  certainly  help  you  to  approve,  it  will 
not  be  enough  that  you  are  unconscious  of  the  rather 
weak  and  ludicrous  figure  you  make.  It  may  be  that 
you  do  not  know  it,  when  he  pities  your  crudity,  or 
smiles  at  your  expense ;  still  it  is  none  the  less  true  that 
he  would  think  of  you  with  more  respect,  if  he  could 
respect  your  opinions. 

Some  of  you  too  will  be  traveling  in  foreign  cities, 
and  all  of  you  in  other  cities  of  your  own  country,  and 
it  will  be  much  to  you  that  you  carry  with  you  tastes 
and  ideals  of  art,  so  far  matured  as  to  enable  you  to  en 
joy  what  is  really  picturesque,  or  finely  conceived ;  or, 
if  you  must  reject  any  thing  as  absurd,  will  allow  you 
to  do  it  with  a  rational  confidence  in  your  judgments. 

Besides,  how  many  of  you,  after  all,  according  to  the 
common  lot  of  Americans,  will  yet  be  sometime  con 
cerned  in  the  shaping,  extending,  or  founding  of 
new  cities.  The  very  slender  qualifications  too  that, 
for  want  of  better  and  more  competent,  have  heretofore 
been  called  to  preside  over  this  most  critical  work,  in 
the  newer  portions  of  our  country,  and  the  thousand 
miserable  abortions  generated  in  consequence,  to  be 
the  perpetual  grief  and  torment  of  posterity,  make  it 


CITY    PLANS.  311 

even  a  kind  of  public  duty  for  every  American  to  put 
himself  in  training,  in  at  least  some  partial  degree,  by 
a  meditation  of  the  points  to  be  gained  and  the  laws  to 
be  observed  in  the  skillful  and  wise  planting  of  such 
new  foundations.  We  admit  the  importance  of  a  good 
plan  for  houses,  and  even  fences  and  barns ;  for  schools, 
and  churches,  and  fortifications,  and  constitutions ;  and 
also  that  all  such  plans  require  much  thought  and  per 
sonal  culture ;  but  cities  are  the  most  incorrigible  in 
their  faults,  as  they  are  most  immovable  in  their  loca 
tion  and  most  nearly  everlasting  in  their  continuance, 
of  all  human  creations,  and  therefore  require  to  be 
never  thrown  upon  a  hap-hazard  beginning,  never  to 
be  extemporized  in  a  crude,  wild  way,  but  always  to  be 
shaped  by  the  wisest  consideration  rather,  and  the 
wisest  understanding  both  of  possibilities  and  princi 
ples.  The  importance,  in  fact,  of  this  kind  of  culture 
will  never  be  underrated,  by  one  who  has  taken  the 
very  sad  lesson  of  a  journey  among  our  new  cities  of 
the  west;  where  possibilities  neglected,  and  principles 
defied,  are  so  often  put  in  eternal  and  eternally  mortify 
ing  evidence,  by  the  awkward,  misbegotten,  contriv 
ances  that  have  taken  hold  of  the  fee  simple  of  nature, 
and  become  the  torment  of  its  beauty  for  all  coming 
time.  Further  I  think  we  need  not  go,  to  find  the  im 
mense  practical  significance  of  the  subject  I  am  now 
called  to  discuss. 

Before  we  undertake  the  more  specific  matters  in 
cluded  in  the  combinations  of  cities,  I  think  it  will  help 


312  CITY    PLANS. 

us  greatly,  to  raise  a  previous  question,  viz.,  what  are 
the  requisites  of  a  good  city  plan?  for  the  points  we 
may  bring  up,  in  a  canvassing  of  this  question,  will  go 
far,  it  may  be,  to  determine  other  questions  of  a  less 
general  nature,  which,  without  some  considerations  pre 
viously  brought  into  view,  it  would  even  be  difficult  to 
settle  at  all.  I  answer  then  the  question  proposed, 
what  are  the  requisites  of  a  good  city  plan,  by  saying — 
1.  That  it  must  make  a  city  and  not  something  else. 
This  may  seem,  at  first  view,  to  be  a  mere  truism,  not 
having  any  very  important  significance ;  but  you  will 
find,  as  you  set  your  mind  upon  it  more  carefully,  that 
it  signifies  much.  The  radical  idea  of  a  city  appears  in 
the  old  proverb — "God  made  the  country  and  man 
made  the  town."  A  city  then  is  man's  world,  a  little 
world  of  life  that  he  has  built  for  himself;  and  accord 
ingly  it  is  to  be  perfected  principally  as  a  thing  within 
itself.  Thus,  for  example,  it  is  no  great  point  that  it 
should  be  located  so  as  to  be  a  conspicuous  object  from 
a  distance,  no  great  point  that  it  should  have  a  com 
manding  outlook  over  the  open  country.  If  there 
should  happen  to  be  some  prominent  cliff  or  acropolis 
which  appears  distinctly  out  at  sea,  or  commands  a  fine 
view  of  the  adjacent  country,  it  is  well — much  better 
than  it  is  in  a  cemetery  or  city  of  the  dead ;  for  there 
the  fine  outlook,  or  distant  prospect,  is  even  a  fault  to 
be  complained  of;  and  when  a  granite  tower  is  built  to 
repair  the  imagined  want  of  a  prospect,  as  in  one  of  our 
most  noted  cemeteries,  what  is  it  but  a  wretched  offense 
to  genuine  sentiment,  and  a  vulgarity  that  should  even 


CITY    PLANS.  318 

be  the  subject  of  public  mortification?  In  a  city  of  the 
living,  the  conditions  of  boundary  and  self-limitation  are 
less  stringent.  Where  there  is  a  point  of  conspicuity  it 
may  be  taken,  or  taken  advantage  of;  but  if  it  should 
appear  that  the  city  was  originally  set  upon  the  rounded 
summit  of  a  hill  for  the  mere  sake  of  conspicuity,  that 
simple  fact  would  forever  destroy  the  sense  of  a  city 
character.  It  is  a  matter  of  far  greater  consequence 
that  the  parts  of  a  city  should  look  into  one  another,  as 
when  they  look  across  a  valley,  than  that  they  should 
have  distant  prospects  looking  away  from  one  another 
into  the  country.  There  wants  to  be  something  in  a 
city  that  produces  a  sense  of  its  being  a  world  in  itself, 
and  this  is  part  of  the  charm  felt  in  the  old  walled 
cities  of  Europe.  There  is  a  sense  in  such  cases  of 
being  gathered  into  city  life,  or  a  life  in  man's  world, 
that  associates  ihe  feeling  of  art  and  community,  and  is 
therefore  only  agreeable. 

You  may  test  this  matter  by  supposing  a  city  built 
on  a  vast  plain,  having  the  streets  so  laid  that  }rou  may 
look  straight  through,  in  every  direction,  into  the 
country  and  the  green  fields.  We  have  only  to  con 
ceive  such  an  arrangement,  to  convince  ourselves,  at 
once,  of  the  painful  vacuity  and  the  insupportable 
weariness  it  will  inflict.  There  is  no  reactive  object  for 
the  eye,  no  sense  of  limit  or  boundary,  no  gathering 
into  city  life.  The  rows  of  houses  and  streets  are  like 
the  rows  of  corn  in  an  unfenced  field  on  the  prairies, 
and  are  scarcely  more  effective  in  the  sense  they  beget  of 
a  man-world  state. 

27 


314  CITY     PLANS. 

On  the  same  general  principle,  that  a  city  is  to  be  a 
city,  and  not  a  something  to  look  from,  or  look  at,  the 
study  should  be,  in  locating  a  public  building,  or  any 
public  ornament,  such  as  a  statue,  or  an  obelisk,  that  it 
is  to  be  so  placed  as  will  show  it  best  within ;  that  is,  to 
the  greatest  number  of  eyes  and  from  the  greatest  num 
ber  of  avenues  or  streets.  If  a  lighthouse  is  to  be 
built,  it  must  doubtless  be  set  to  look  out  upon  the  sea ; 
if  a  monument,  a  pillar,  a  commemoration  tower,  let  it 
stand  a  mark  for  all  eyes,  if  possible,  within  the  city 
lines.  The  city,  in  short,  will  be  most  perfectly 
planned,  other  things  being  equal,  when  it  makes  a 
world  for  itself  and  reveals  its  ornaments  most  effectu 
ally  to  itself.  Like  the  inside  of  a  house,  it  is  to  be 
planned  for  inside  show,  completeness  and  beauty.  It 
may  also  be  given  as  a  requisite — 

2.  Of  a  good  city  plan,  that  it  shall  always  unite, 
if  possible,  something  historical.  There  needs,  in  or 
der  to  the  most  pleasing  and  picturesque  effect,  to  be  an 
impression  produced  of  growth,  or  extension.  There 
should  be  an  old-looking  part,  and  a  new-looking ;  an 
irregular,  perhaps,  and  a  regular.  As  a  house  will  be 
most  pleasing  when  it  looks  as  if  it  grew  up  with  the 
family,  by  successive  enlargements  and  room  by  room, 
as  other  rooms  were  wanted,  not  when  it  appears  to 
have  been,  at  the  first,  a  complete  and  forever  inexten- 
sible  formality — a  pagoda,  an  octagon,  or  a  Greek 
temple,  waiting  for  any  body,  or  every  body,  or  no 
body,  and  the  same'  to  all — so  a  city  will  be  most 
pleasing  when  the  history  is  told  by  the  plan.  If  suoh 


CITY    PLANS.  315 

a  city  for  example  as  Philadelphia  were  to  be  extended 
by  additional  squares,  till  it  was  as  large  as  Babylon, 
there  would  be  no  history  in  it.  New  York,  on  the 
other  hand,  shows,  in  the  contrast  of  old  and  irregular 
parts  with  the  new,  some  traces  of  having  had  a  history. 
The  small  city  of  New  Haven  too  reveals  a  token  of 
histor}?-  which  is  really  the  very  best  point  of  the  plan, 
though  deplored,  I  have  no  doubt,  every  day  of  the 
year,  by  the  majority  of  the  citizens,  as  a  defect  that 
can  never  be  repaired — I  speak  of  the  fact  that  all  the 
outer  portion  of  the  city,  which  is  much  the  larger  por 
tion,  is  seen  to  have  virtually  planned  itself.  At  the 
original  planting,  there  were  laid  out  a  few  blocks,  or 
squares,  composing  what  is  now  the  core  of  the  town, 
and  was  considered,  at  the  time,  to  be  the  whole  town 
of  the  future.  Into  this  core  of  square- work  came  the 
public  roads,  each  in  its  own  natural  line  of  direction, 
meeting  it  sometimes  at  the  sides,  oftener  at  the  angles ; 
and  then,  afterwards,  the  city  spread  itself  out  upon 
these  roads,  divergently  related  to  each  other ;  and  so  it 
resulted  that  no  single  street  goes  out  of  the  city  in  a 
line  parallel  to  the  block- work  lines  of  the  center ;  sec 
ondly,  that  no  pne  standing  in  the  streets  of  the  block- 
work  center  can  look  completely  through  into  the  open 
country;  and  thirdly,  that  a  story  is  written  in  the 
very  lines  of  the  streets,  which  saves  the  town  from  the 
eternal  monotony  of  its  levels,  and  of  its  otherwise  reg 
ular  form.  In  the  same  manner,  the  boulevards  of 
Paris  are  history,  representing,  for  all  future  time,  to  the 
eye,  the  spaces  covered  by  the  ancient  walls  and  fortifi- 


316  CITY    PLANS. 

cations,  now  cleared  away,  and  recalling  the  day  when 
Paris  was  only  a  small  fortified  town.  Frankfort  on 
the  Maine  is  an  illustration  still  more  to  the  purpose. 
It  stands  on  a  river,  occupying  a  plain  surface,  much 
like  Philadelphia,  In  the  nucleus  or  core,  is  the  an 
cient  town,  the  part  that  used  to  be  contained  within 
the  walls.  There,  as  the  plan  was  to  get  as  many  people 
as  possible  into  as  little  circuit  as  possible,  in  order  to 
make  the  defense  more  easy,  the  structures  are  crowded, 
rear  upon  rear,  and  the  blocks  are  cut  up  in  all  manner 
of  zigzag  lines,  wherever  a  building  can  find  room,  and 
the  streets  themselves  are  often  contracted  so  that  a  man 
may  touch  both  sides  with  his  hands.  'No  space  of 
open  ground  is  any  where  left,  save  in  what  is  called 
the  market-place — a  paved  acre,  so  to  speak,  where  the 
vegetables  and  meats  might  be  offered  for  the  provision 
ing  of  the  fortress  otherwise  called  the  city.  But  the 
day  of  gunpowder,  cannon-balls  and  bombs  arrives,  and, 
behold,  the  walls  are  worthless!  Accordingly  a  new 
modern  figure  begins  in  the  clearing  away  of  the  walls, 
much  as  in  New  Haven,  only  for  a  different  reason. 
The  wall  and  fortification  circle  becomes  a  public  gar 
den,  threaded  by  mazy  walks  among  shades  and  flow 
ers  ;  and  then,  outside  of  this,  round  the  whole  circuit, 
there  spreads  a  new  modern  city,  with  broad,  straight 
avenues  and  ample  house-lots,  fronted  with  trees,  in  the 
manner  of  a  new  American  city.  And  so  the  modern 
Frankfort  is  old  Frankfort  converted  into  history.  The 
people  walk  about  in  a  history.  It  stands  before  their 
eyes,  it  touches  their  feet,  they  do  their  business,  locate 


CITY    PLANS.  317 

their  houses,  take  their  title-deeds  and  feel  the  winds 
themselves  in  the  lines  of  old  historic  record. 

As  then  a  city  ought,  if  possible,  to  be  in  some  way 
historic,  it  should  not  be  planned  in  any  such  absolute, 
complete  form,  that  the  future  lines  will  be  determined 
by  those  laid  down.  If  the  people  of  New  Haven  had 
passed  an  order  that  all  the  roads  coming  into  the  town 
should  coincide  in  direction  with  the  streets  in  it,  they 
would  have  very  nearly  ruined  their  present  city, 
which  is,  on'  the  whole,  one  of  the  best  planned  cities 
in  the  country.  Something  must  be  left  to  the  liberty 
of  the  future,  to  produce  that  air  of  growth  and  historic 
life  which  is  necessary  to  a  really  fine  city.  It  is  not 
enough  that  there  should  be  something  informal,  or  ir 
regular  in  the  plan ;  that  will  not  produce  the  historic 
air  we  speak  of,  when  it  still  appears  to  be  an  irregu 
larity  originally  planned.  No. city  is  less  historic  in  its 
air  than  the  city  of  "Washington,  because  it  is  so  mani 
festly  set  down  at  the  first  to  be  just  what  it  is.  In 
this  point  of  view  it  is  the  worst  planned  city  in  the 
world;  for,  if  it  were  to  exist  a  thousand  years,  it 
would  still  wear  the  look  of  study  and  never  the  look 
of  growth.  If  it  were  a  simple  block- work  or  chess 
board  plan,  it  might  possibly  be  a  more  natural  exten 
sion  of  some  plan  originally  small,  but  the  studied, 
foredoomed,  regular,  irregularity  of  Washington,  never 
can  appear  to  be  any  thing  but  an  artificial  and  formal 
appointment,  with  which  history  and  growth  have  had 
as  little  to  do,  as  with  a  diagram  of  Euclid.  Hence, 
notwithstanding  some  good  points  in  the  plan,  there 

27* 


318  CITY    PLANS. 

must  be  an  eternal  dryness  and  constraint  in  it.  No 
plan  can  be  agreeable  that  excludes  the  sense  of  history, 
or  wins  the  fact  of  antiquity,  without  any  such  tokens 
of  the  times  and  changes  gone  by,  as  may  notch  the 
stages  of  progress  and  make  the  antiquity  visible. 

3.  A  city  must  be  so  arranged,  if  it  can  be,  as  to  an 
swer  the  conditions  of  health.  No  city  over  which  the 
pale  angels  of  sickness  are  always  hovering  becomes  or 
namental  or  attractive.  Heavy  bills  of  mortality  keep 
down  the  tonic  energy  of  art.  Not  even  the  best  com 
mercial  advantages  brace  the  feeling  up  to  improvement. 
Thrift  itself  takes  on  a  scarcely  thrifty  look,  because  the 
men  most  forward  in  it  are  always  finding  how  to  with 
draw  and  get  a  chance  to  live.  Even  the  stone  of  ar 
chitecture  looks  weak  in  its  lines,  and  statuary  droops 
in  expression,  where  a  funeral  miasma  loads  the  atmos 
phere.  The  mere  repute  of  unhealthiness  is  a  heavy 
oar  of  disadvantage,  as  regards  any  kind  of  progress 
and  culture. 

And  yet  a  city  must  sometimes  be  located  where  the 
natural  conditions  are  less  favorable  to  health  than 
would  be  desirable,  because  the  trade,  which  is  to  be 
its  life,  can  not  be  accommodated  with  a  better  site. 
There  was  probably  no  better  choice  for  New  Orleans 
than  the  choice  that  was  made.  If  there  was  no  other 
river  mouth,  or  harbor,  at  the  south  end  of  Lake  Mich 
igan,  Chicago  was  obliged  to  settle  into  the  vast  mud- 
plain  it  occupies,  just  above  the  surface  of  the  water, 
and  contrive  to  get  the  necessary  drainage  for  a  great 
city  in  what  manner  it  best  could.  Still  a  great  deal 


CITY    PLANS.  319 

can  be  done  for  the  healthiness  of  almost  any  location, 
if  only  the  city  plan  is  rightly  adjusted  and  the  true 
sanitary  conditions  are  duly  attended  to  afterwards. 

Thus  it  is  one  of  the  first  and  most  important  mat 
ters  in  adjusting  the  plan  of  a  city,  to  prepare  a  suffi 
cient  drainage  or  sewerage.  And  if  the  ground  is  too 
low,  or  too  flat,  to  allow  a  sufficient  drainage  by  grav 
ity,  the  plan  must  be  arranged  so  as  to  favor  an  arti 
ficial  and  forced  drainage,  discharging  at  a  point  under 
water,  and  remote  from  the  shore.  More  commonly 
there  will  be  a  sufficient  natural  drainage,  if  only  it  is 
taken  due  advantage  of  in  the  grade  and  location  of 
streets.  There  will  be  some  low  ground,  or  natural  de 
pression  of  surface,  such  that,  if  some  avenue  is  laid 
along  the  depression,  conforming,  in  a  degree,  to  its 
sinuosities,  there  will  be  no  difficulty  in  carrying  off,  by 
a  main  sewer  under  it,  all  that  is  brought  down  by  a 
multitude  of  side  sewers  into  the  main  which  nature* 
has  provided  for.  Whereas,  if  everything  is  sacrificed 
to  regularity  of  lines  and  gradings,  and  the  low  grounds 
are  filled  up  to  even  the  grade  across  them,  there  will 
be,  as  there  ought  to  be,  no  drainage  left.  Too  great 
attention  can  not  be  given  in  the  adjustment  of  a  city 
plan  to  the  easy  and  natural  drainage  of  the  parts. 

It  is  also  a  great  question,  as  respects  the  health  of  a 
city,  in  what  direction,  or  according  to  what  points  of 
the  compass,  the  streets  are  to  be  laid.  To  most  persons 
it  will  appear  to  be  a  kind  of  law,  that  the  city  shall 
stand  square  with  the  cardinal  points  of  the  compass — 
north  and  south,  east  and  west.  And  where  this  law 


320  CITY    PLANS. 

appears  to  have  not  been  regarded,  how  many  will  de 
plore  so  great  an  oversight,  and  even  have  it  as  the 
standing  regret  of  their  criticism.  Whereas,  in  the  true 
economy  of  health  and  comfort,  no  single  house,  or 
city,  should  ever  stand  thus,  squared  by  the  four  cardi 
nal  points,  if  it  can  be  avoided.  On  the  contrary,  it 
should  have  its  lines  of  frontage  northeast  and  south 
west,  northwest  and  southeast,  where  such  a  disposition 
can  be  made  without  injury  in  some  other  respect; 
that  so  the  sun  may  strike  every  side  of  exposure  every 
day  in  the  year,  to  dry  it  when  wet  by  storms,  to  keep 
off  the  mold  and  moss  that  are  likely  to  collect  on  it, 
and  remove  the  dank  sepulchral  smell  that  so  often 
makes  the  tenements  of  cities  both  uncomfortable  and 
poisonous  to  health. 

Regard  should  also  be  had  in  the  laying  of  streets  to 
their  ventilation ;  that  is,  to  the  courses  of  the  winds  in 
the  warmer  and  less  healthy  seasons  of  the  year.  Thus, 
in  our  particular  climate,  the  coolest  breeze  of  the  sum 
mer  and  the  softest  of  the  winter  is  the  sea-breeze,  which 
comes  directly  from  the  south.  The  wind  therefore 
requires  exactly  the  same  quartering  of  the  streets  that 
is  required  by  the  sun ;  for,  in  streets  that  run  directly 
east  and  west,  at  right-angles  to  the  course  of  the  wind, 
the  tenements  will  scarcely  feel  it  on  their  south  side, 
because  the  tenements  opposite  will  keep  it  off,  and  will 
much  less  feel  it  on  their  north  side,  because  they  keep 
it  off  themselves.  Meantime,  on  the  streets  that  run 
directly  north  and  south  in  the  line  of  the  wind  itself, 
it  will  only  brush  the  surfaces  on  either  side,  and  will 


CITY    PLANS.  321 

scarcety  press  into  the  windows  at  all.  Whereas,  if  the 
streets  were  laid  diagonally  in  relation  to  the  breeze, 
that  is,  in  our  particular  case,  northeast  and  southwest, 
and  southeast  and  northwest,  the  current  would  press 
into  all  the  streets  and  into  and  through  all  the  houses 
open  to  its  passage,  making  eddies  and  whirls  at  every 
crossing,  and  fanning,  as  it  were,  by  its  breath,  the 
whole  city.  In  a  different  case,  where  the  prevailing 
breeze  of  summer  requires  the  streets  to  quarter  in  one 
line  of  diagonal,  and  the  sun  in  another,  the  conflict 
can  be  settled  only  by  compromise,  or  by  sacrificing 
one  advantage  to  the  other. 

4.  It  is  another  requisite  in  the  planning  of  a  city 
that  it  be  so  arranged  as  to  serve  the  purposes  of  con 
venience.  Rectangular  blocks  and  structures  have  so 
great  an  advantage  in  this  respect,  that  squares  and 
parallelograms  must  and  will  predominate  in  all  well 
planned  cities.  In  this  rectangular  form  architects  and 
builders  are  best  accommodated.  The  rectangular  plan 
also  furnishes  most  easily,  and  is  well  nigh  indispensable 
to  an  elegant  and  attractive  interior.  The  shops  of  trade 
require  the  same.  Conceding  then  so  much,  in  regard 
to  the  better  convenience  of  the  rectangular  form,  it  be 
comes  a  problem,  requiring  only  to  be  the  more  care 
fully  studied,  how,  or  by  what  means,  it  may  be  so  far 
modified  as  to  save  it  from  the  insufferable  tameness 
and  stupidity  of  a  mere  gingham  city,  of  the  Babylo 
nian,  or  Philadelphian  type. 

Not  seldom  will  convenience  itself  require  a  devia 
tion,  as  where  there  is  some  curvilinear  sweep  of  low 


322  CITY    PLANS. 

ground  along  which  a  principal  avenue  will  most  natu 
rally  trace  itself,  covering  some  principal  sewer  of  drain 
age.  Sometimes  there  will  be  a  steep-faced  bluff,  round 
the  foot  of  which  a  quay,  or  general  landing-place  for 
merchandise  may  sweep,  conforming  to  its  lines.  Some 
times  there  will  be  round-sided  hills  in  the  background, 
rising,  it  may  be,  into  rocky  summits ;  such  as  would 
command  a  fine  outlook  over  the  city  and  harbor,  if 
only  the  ascent  could  be  made  easy  for  the  accommoda 
tion  of  residences.  To  lay  a  covering  of  squares,  on 
the  faces  of  such  bluffs  and  rounded  hills,  would  even 
be  absurd;  for  the  ascent  of  their  heights  can  be 
made  only  by  straight  lines  that  are  very  oblique  and 
cut  each  other  diamond-wise,  or  by  a  spiralling  in 
curve  lines  that  cut  each  other  in  acute  angles.  By  the 
neglecting  of  this  very  obvious  expedient,  the  noble 
background  of  the  fine  city  of  San  Francisco  is  sacri 
ficed  and  forever  lost.  Lying  in  a  capacious  bowl  or 
concave  between  the  hills  and  the  bay,  the  city  is  laid 
off,  as  it  should  be,  in  parallelograms,  with  only  here 
and  there  a  deviation  from  uniformity,  and,  as  every 
thing  passing  on  the  concave  length  of  every  street  is 
visible  of  course  in  every  part  of  it,  there  is  a  wonderful 
vivacity  in  the  circulations.  But  as  soon  as  the  rect 
angular  form,  pushing  up  the  steep  hill-sides,  reaches  a 
point  where  the  ascent  for  carriages  is  no  longer  possi 
ble,  the  whole  space  above,  which  ought  to  have  been 
covered  with  residences  of  the  highest  character,  loses 
value  and  is  occupied  only  by  cheap  tenements,  such  as 
mules  and  footmen,  climbing  up  as  they  best  can,  are 


CITY    PLANS.  323 

able  to  furnish  with  supplies.  So  far  the  rectangular 
plan  is  the  enemy  of  all  convenience.  Nay  it  is  even 
the  final  destruction  of  the  finest  possibilities  of  beauty. 
Had  the  engineers  of  San  Francisco,  when  reaching  a 
certain  point,  deflected  their  straight  lines,  running 
them  into  spirals  that  cut  each  other  obliquely,  the 
plan  which  now  runs  out,  in  the  background,  into  a 
weak  and  crazy- looking  conspicuity,  would  have 
crowned  itself  in  a  summit  of  ornament  ascended  by 
easy  drives,  and  looking  down  from  its  terraces  on  all 
the  activity  of  a  populous  and  beautiful  city. 

By  the  law  of  convenience  the  width  also  of  the 
streets  will,  in  general,  be  most  properly  determined. 
Primarily  cities  are  for  use — only  for  show  and  beauty 
afterward — and  when  we  consider  the  matter  of  use,  it 
is  obvious  enough  that  streets  may  be  too  narrow  and 
also  too  wide  for  the  convenience  of  use.  A  very  nar 
row  street  strangles  the  free  circulation  of  business,  a 
very  wide  one  never  can  be  made  to  have  the  air  of 
business.  In  a  very  large  city  there  ought  to  be  a  few 
great  arteries  of  motion  where  it  may  flow  unobstructed 
from  one  side  to  the  other ;  like  the  great  central  street 
of  Antioch,  for  example,  which  was  four  miles  long  and 
some  two  hundred  feet  broad,  flanked,  on  either  side, 
by  a  lofty  colonnade  or  archwork  of  stone,  which  cov 
ered  the  promenade  walks  from  one  end  to  the  other. 
But  the  ordinary  streets  of  cities  are  more  agreeable 
when  they  are  from  fifty  to  eighty  feet  wide.  Neither 
is  it  a  point  to  be  greatly  insisted  on,  that  there  shall 
be  a  large  and  spacious  rear  provided  for  in  the  center 


324  CITY    PLANS. 

of  a  block  or  square ;  for  it  spreads  the  business  and 
the  population  over  too  large  a  surface,  introducing 
magnificent  distances  where  you  want  the  sense  of 
density  and  a  crowding,  rapid,  all-to-do  activity — which 
is  one  of  the  principal  attractions  of  a  city.  Besides, 
when  the  population  or  the  business  begins  to  press  for 
room  in  any  quarter,  it  is  sure  to  burst  into  the  vacant 
centers  and  rear  grounds,  erecting  there  store-houses, 
stables,  manufactories,  and  producing,  at  last,  a  more 
crowded  state  in  the  rear  than  if  no  such  centers  had 
been  reserved ;  with  the  disadvantage  that  they  are 
crowded  often  with  unsightly  and  filthy  nuisances,  in 
place  of  the  clean,  close,  rear,  that  would  have  been  se 
cured  by  a  less  roomy  plan  at  the  first. 

Thus  far  we  have  been  occupied  mainly  with  the  re 
quisites  of  a  fine  city ;  considering  what  conditions  it 
should  answer,  and  what,  in  idea,  it  is  or  ought  to  be. 
In  this  inquiry  we  have  touched  incidentally  a  good 
many  points  and  settled  in  advance  many  important 
questions.  The  next  thing  in  order  is  the  question  of 
location,  or  site. 

This  however  is  a  question  that  is  very  often  de 
termined  beforehand,  and  that  not  seldom  by  what  ap 
pears  to  be  only  an  accident — a  tent  that  was  pitched 
by  a  spring,  a  landing  made  for  the  night  upon  the 
shore  of  some  river  or  bay.  A  little  hamlet  is  thus  be 
gun  which  insists  on  the  right  of  growth,  and  when  the 
thought  of  being  sometime  a  city  takes  it,  puts  forth  it 
self  in  the  adjustment  of  an  embryo  plan.  In  ancient 


CITY    PLANS.  325 

times,  cities  were  located  for  mere  safety,  or  ease  of  de 
fense,  and  not  for  any  particular  purpose  of  convenience 
or  beauty,  gome  precipitous  cliff  of  rock  was  taken, 
some  peninsular  bluff  in  the  bend  of  a  river,  some  island 
in  some  lake  or  bay.  The  sides  most  exposed,  or  per 
haps  all  the  sides,  were  defended  by  a  wall  and  then 
the  problem  was  to  crowd  as  many  houses  and  people 
as  possible,  into  a  space  as  contracted  as  possible,  that 
there  might  be  many  defenders  and  but  a  small  extent 
of  wall  to  defend.  The  result  was  rather  a  citadel  than 
a  city.  The  people  went  into  it  as  into  their  den,  to  be 
kept  in  close  quarters,  and  settle  the  balance  between 
dying  under  the  hand  of  enemies  outside  and  by  pesti 
lential  infections  inside,  as  they  best  could.  Thus  we 
have  Jerusalem,  Tyre,  Venice,  Mantua,  Berne,  Geneva, 
Paris,  Edinburgh,  and  a  very  considerable  part  of  the 
ancient  cities — they  were  located  as  for  defense  and 
grew  into  cities  afterward. 

In  modern  times  and  especially  in  our  own  new 
country,  it  is  a  remarkable  distinction  that  we  have  it 
given  us  so  often  to  locate  a  city ;  and  not  only  this, 
but  that  we  are  allowed  to  consult,  first  of  all,  the  con 
veniences  of  use  and  ornament.  The  summit  of  rock, 
the  fastness  or  natural  fortification  which  can  not  be 
scaled,  or  mined,  has  no  longer  any  thing  to  commend 
it — gunpowder  has  made  its  defenses  worthless — and 
there  *is  nothing  left  us  but  to  spread  our  cities  out 
where  we  want  them  to  be,  and  the  freedom  of  trade 
requires  them  to  be. 

And  yet  it  is  remarkable  that,  having  all  this  liberty, 
28 


326  CITY    PLANS. 

we  so  often  locate  our  cities  in  a  manner  that  sacrifices 
even  the  convenience  of  business  and  the  comfort  of  life. 
California,  for  example,  has  founded  three  important 
cities  or  marts  of  trade  which,  considering  their  new 
ness,  are  well  built  and  have  a  generally  fine  appear 
ance — San  Francisco,  Sacramento,  and  Marysville. 
The  two  last  are  even  set  below  high  water  mark! 
when,  at  the  distance  of  scarcely  more  than  a  mile, 
they  could  both  have  secured  a  fine  ample  high  ground 
never  invaded  by  water,  and  equally  convenient  for  the 
purposes  of  trade — one  of  them  as  much  more  conven 
ient  as  a  perpetual  access  by  steam  navigation  is  better 
than  a  mile  of  transportation  by  land  for  the  whole  dry 
season  of  the  year !  The  first,  San  Francisco,  is  bound 
to  be  a  successful  and  really  grand  city,  but,  with  all 
its  fine  natural  advantages,  it  unites  a  remarkable  com 
bination  of  disadvantages  that  might  all  have  been 
avoided  by  choosing  another  site.  Occupying  now  the 
north  end  of  a  narrow,  jagged,  dike  of  mountains  forty 
miles  long,  between  the  bay  and  the  sea,  the  chance  of 
a  railroad  connection  inland  is  cut  off  as  completely  as 
if  it  were  forty  miles  at  sea,  save  in  one  particular  di 
rection.  Meantime  there  is  no  place  anywhere  for  the 
excavation  of  a  dock,  which  the  high  tides  of  that  coast 
render  necessary  for  the  convenience  of  trade,  as  truly 
as  the  tides  of  Liverpool  and  London — all  the  more 
necessary  that  the  sands  drifted  up  the  western  slopes, 
in  the  trade- wind  season,  from  the  sea-beach  two  miles 
back  of  the  city,  are  continually  spilling  down  into  it, 
and  finding  their  way  thus  into  the  wharfages  to  shallow 


CITY    PLANS.  327 

the  water  and  compel  new  extensions  to  serve  the  uses 
of  shipping.  The  defenses  of  the  harbor-gate  are  easy, 
and  yet  no  defenses  can  ever  make  the  city  secure,  for 
the  reason  that  an  enemy  has  only  to  make  his  landing 
on  the  beach,  two  miles  back  of  thb  town,  and  take  it 
by  an  assault  in  the  rear.  It  can  even  be  bombarded 
from  the  open  sea.  Now,  incredible  as  it  may  seem,  for 
a  stranger  will  hardly  believe  it,  there  was,  just  over 
the  bay,  and  a  few  miles  to  the  north,  at  a  little  hamlet 
called  San  Pablo,  a  grand  natural  city  plat  about  five 
miles  square,  graded  handsomely  down  to  the  bay,  sup 
plied  on  its  upper  edge  with  the  very  best  water  break 
ing  out  of  a  gorge  in  the  hills,  having  a  straight  path 
out  to  sea  for  ships,  among  islands  of  rock  easily  de 
fended,  and  a  fair  open  sweep  for  railroad  connections, 
north,  east,  and  south,  with  gradings  half  prepared  al 
ready,  and,  behind  a  rocky  summit  on  its  mid-front,  a 
natural  dock  ground  two  miles  long,  partly  covered  by 
the  tides  even  now,  and  open' to  the  deep  water  at  both 
ends — in  short,  there  was  never  in  the  world  such  a  site 
for  a  magnificent  commercial  city.  But  alas!  the  site 
is  fixed  elsewhere,  by  the  mere  chance  landing  of  ad 
venture,  and  a  change  is  forever  impossible!  What 
an  illustration  of  the  immense,  or  even  literally  un 
speakable  importance  of  the  results  that  are  sometimes 
pending  on  the  right  location  of  a  city ! 

Let  me  not  be  understood  as  deprecating,  in  this 
matter  of  location,  a  just,  or  even  supreme  reference  to 
considerations  of  business.  This,  to  the  modern  city,  is 
what  the  stomach  is  to  the  body ;  for  as  the  body  can 


328  CITY    PLANS. 

not  grow,  or  build  its  fair  proportions  and  lay  on  its 
colors,  unless  the  rather  unpoetical  matter  of  digestion 
is  accommodated,  so  no  city  can  live  and  become  great, 
which  is  not  grown  or  populated  by  the  uses  of  busi 
ness.  The  melancholy  fact  is  that  cities  are  so  often  lo 
cated  in  a  manner  of  accident  as  little  opportune  to  the 
uses  of  business,  as  to  the  higher  purposes  of  comfort, 
health,  and  ornament.  Commonly  they  ask  to  be  lo 
cated  at  the  foot  of  some  valley,  or  at  the  conjunction 
of  several  valleys  where  roads  will  naturally  center,  and 
where  rivers  unite  with  one  another,  or  with  lakes  or 
the  sea,  just  because  the  natural  confluences  of  business 
are  there.  And  if  the  location  is  bad  in  many  other  re 
spects,  we  have  no  reason  to  complain  that  trade  drives 
the  stake  of  location,  saying  "Here." 

Accepting  the  decree,  nothing  is  left  us  afterward, 
but  to  make  the  place  all  which  it  can  be  made,  by  a 
wise  and  well  considered  city  plan.  And  how  shall  we 
proceed  in  framing  it?  Obviously  enough  we  can  not 
so  much  as  draw  one  line  of  it  theoretically  beforehand. 
The  most  we  can  do  is  to  raise  suggestions,  and  bring- 
out  elementary  principles,  leaving  them  to  find  such 
applications  as  they  may,  when  the  ground  is  fixed, 
and  the  real  problem  for  that  ground  arrives. 

And  here  what  I  have  already  advanced,  in  showing 
the  requisites  of  a  fine  city,  will  go  far  in  determining 
the  outlines  of  the  plan  to  be  made.  Other  suggestions 
of  a  more  specific  nature  can  also  be  made  and,  beyond 
that,  everything  must  be  left  to  the  particular  conditions 
of  the  particular  case  in  hand. 


CITY    PLANS.  329 

The  first  thing  commonly  is  to  consider  the  business 
frontages  of  the  river,  lake,  or  bay,  and  accept  their 
lines  as  the  fixed  determinations  of  nature,  requiring 
everything  else  in  the  plan  to  have  some  proper  refer 
ence  to  them. 

In  the  next  place,  it  should  be  considered  along 
what  low  grounds  or  depressions  of  surface  the  railroads 
will  ask  to  come  in ;  for  the  railroads  always  seek  the 
lines  of  depression.  Here  too  they  can  be  more  easily 
bridged,  so  as  to  offer  no  obstruction  to  the  circulations 
of  the  streets.  Along  these  low  grounds  too,  on  one  or 
possibly  on  both  sides  of  the  railroads,  there  will  com 
monly  be  laid,  in  lines  partly  conforming  to  them,  great 
avenues  of  travel  coming  in  from  the  country,  under 
which  also  the  principal  sewers  of  drainage  will  find 
their  place. 

Next,  if  a  little  way  back  of  the  frontages  of  business, 
there  are  bluffs  or  precipitous  slopes,  the  inquiry  will 
be  by  what  lines,  spiral  or  oblique,  they  may  best  be 
ascended.  So  also  if  there  are  bluffs  or  hills  at  the  back 
of  the  site  to  be  occupied. 

Accepting,  thus  far,  the  lines  of  nature,  which  will 
commonly  be  curvilinear,  and  will  make  irregular  an 
gles  with  each  other,  the  skeleton  of  the  plan  that  is  to 
be,  is  made  out,  and  the  filling  up  only  remains.  And 
this  will  be  done  to  a  considerable  degree,  at  least,  by  a 
rectangular  block- work,  .adjusted  by  some  principal 
straight  line,  or  lines,  running  up  and  along  the  natural 
summits,  or  ridges  between  the  low  grounds  and  their 
avenues.  These  principal,  straight  line  streets,  having 

28* 


330  CITY    PLANS. 

the  position  of  dignity,  will  be  the  Broadways  of  the 
plan.  They  will  be  flanked,  on  either  side,  of  course, 
by  parallels,  and  intersected  by  streets  at  right-angles, 
running  down  to  the  low  grounds.  But  if  the  ground 
of  the  central  street,  or  Broadway,  is  high  enough  to 
give  a  considerable  slope  to  the  intersecting  streets, 
they  should  never  cross  over,  but  should  meet,  on  one 
side,  the  centers  of  blocks  on  the  other;  because  the 
eye,  looking  up,  will  only  look  out  into  the  open  sky, 
if  they  cross  over,  and  see  nothing  beside ;  whereas,  if 
it  could  meet  some  grand  architectural  frontage,  looking 
down — some  church,  or  college,  or  court-house,  or  bank, 
or  exchange,  or  hotel — the  aspect  of  elegance  and  beauty 
would  be  maintained,  in  a  degree-  that  is  always  im 
posing.  Indeed,  it  may  be  laid  down  as  a  rule,  that 
no  straight  street  should  ever  cross  over  the  back 
of  a  summit,  or  considerable  convexity,  and  should 
never  fail  to  cross  over  a  valley,  or  depression;  for, 
when  it  crosses  a  convexity,  the  eye  will  only  look 
through  into  vacancy,  and  when  it  crosses  a  hollow 
surface,  everything  moving  in  it,  from  one  end  to  the 
other,  will  be  visible  at  a  glance,  and  a  scene  of  perpet 
ual,  ever  shifting,  vivacity  will  be  maintained. 

Besides,  it  is  a  great  point  in  the  planning  of  a  city, 
to  get  as  many  good  frontages  for  architecture  as  possi 
ble;  so  that,  moving  through  it  in  every  direction,  the 
eye  will  be  always  meeting,  in  square  front  if  possible, 
some  grandly  imposing  or  beautiful  object.  A  city 
like  Philadelphia  has  no  frontages,  and,  if  it  were  made 
up  of  palaces,  the  eye  would  only  look  by  them,  never 


CITY    PLANS.  331 

at  them,  and  they  would'  make  but  a  feeble,  side-glance 
impression.  On  the  other  hand,  a  city  planned  like 
Edinburgh  in  the  new  part,  or  in  the  happy  combina 
tion  of  the  old  and  the  new.  would  so  display  its  front 
ages,  at  every  turn,  as  to  make  everything  fine  even 
doubly  impressive. 

Thus  far  we  are  able  to  say,  with  great  positiveness, 
what  should  or  should  not  be  done.  But  there  is  a 
large  field  left,  where  the  conditions  must  be  variable, 
and  where  only  a  large,  well  trained  discretion  can  suf 
ficiently  direct. 

It  may  be  that  the  site  to  be  occupied  has  no  middle 
ground  of  elevation,  but  lies  in  a  bowl  of  depression, 
surrounded  by  a  rim  of  overhanging  summits.  In  that 
very  fortunate  case,  everything  must  be  so  ordered  as 
to  take  the  best  advantage  of  the  ground.  The  center 
now  will  be  the  chief  point  of  show  or  impression ;  for 
everything  looks  into  it,  and  all  the  motion  of  the  cen 
tral  crossings  will  be  visible  from  the  surrounding 
slopes,  or  summits.  If  the  streets  do  not  radiate  from 
this  center,  or  from  some  open  ground  reserved  for  the 
more  imposing  structures  of  the  city,  they  should  have 
their  crossings  arranged  so  as  to  show  all  the  motion 
going  on,  and  to  make  the  frontages  of  architecture 
conspicuous.  And  then  the  summits,  visible  from  the 
center  on  every  side,  should  be  kept  for  the  occupancy 
of  great  institutions  not  wanted  in  the  city  itself — col 
leges,  armories,  hospitals,  asylums,  and  the  like,  ar 
ranged  to  overlook  and  crown  the  amphitheater  below. 

Sometimes  the  ground  of  a  city  site  will  be  so  far 


832  CITY    PLANS. 

broken  by  projecting  hill-sides,  that  the  streets,  which 
are  generally  straight  and  cross  at  right-angles,  will  be 
most  naturally  deflected,  or  turned  off  into  new  lines; 
or  they  will  require  to  be  curved  about  the  faces,  here 
and  there,  of  projecting  promontories.  In  such  cases 
there  should  never  be  any  attempt  to  force  a  line 
against  nature ;  for  a  curvilinear  street  is  always  agree 
able  and  graceful  where  there  is  a  natural  reason  for  it, 
which  the  eye  will  at  once  distinguish.  On  a  dead 
plane  there  can  be  no  such  reason,  and  a  crooked  street 
is  never  to  be  planned,  because  it  will  never  be  agreea 
ble — the  plan  must  be  conformed  to  geometric  lines; 
but,  among  hills  and  moving  round  their  faces,  nothing 
in  fact  is  harder  and  more  repulsive  than  dashes  of 
deep  excavation  to  cut  a  line  straight  through.  The 
same  law  holds  in  respect  to  gradings,  when  the  line  of 
grade  is  cut  by  denies  to  be  crossed.  No  uniform 
grade  should  be  forced  in  such  cases  by  cutting  and  fill 
ing,  but  the  surrender  to  nature  should  be  gracefully 
made,  by  only  so  far  tempering  the  inequalities,  as  to 
produce  a  moderately  waving  surface.  The  rule  to  be 
followed  in  all  such  cases,  whether  of  deflection,  or  of 
unequal  grade,  is  to  make  the  lines  flow  gracefully  into 
each  other  by  curves,  and  never  allow  the  change  to  be 
notified  by  knee-joint  angles.  All  angles  greater  than 
about  forty-five  degrees,  whether  in  grade  or  direction, 
have  a  mean  look,  and  the  wider  the  angle,  the  meaner 
the  look ;  as  if  they  were  the  notching  of  a  surveyor's 
stations — indicating  the  work  of  .a  surveyor  and  not  of  an 
arti st.  In  grades  thei  r  v ul garity  is  even  quite  intolerable. 


CITY    PLANS.  333 

The  beauty  of  a  city  depends,  to  a  considerable  de 
gree,  on  the  right  arrangement  and  due  multiplication 
of  vacant  spaces.  Thus,  where  straight  line  streets 
meet  those  which  are  in  curves,  an  irregular  and  small 
opening  may  be  left  with  advantage,  to  be  occupied  by 
a  watering-place,  a  fountain,  or  a  statue.  If  there  be 
some  point  from  which  many  streets  open  by  radiant 
lines,  a  fine  effect  will  be  secured,  by  drawing  there  an 
elipse,  or  circle,  or  irregular  figure  of  open  ground  that 
will  cut  off  the  otherwise  sharp  ending  blocks,  and 
making  room,  at  the  center,  for  some  column,  or  monu 
mental  tower,  or  equestrian  statue,  that  will  meet  the 
eye  looking  in  from  every  direction  down  the  radiating 
streets.  If  there  be  some  very  large  section  of  the  city 
which  is  covered  by  rectangular  block-work,  the  mo 
notony  should  be  relieved  by  here  and  there  a  vacant 
block,  kept  open  for  some  kind  of  ornamental  use.  Or, 
since  nothing  placed  in  the  center  of  such  a  block  will 
be  visible  from  the  streets  coming  in,  four  blocks  may 
be  truncated  at  their  corners,  to  make  a  vacant  space  or 
opening,  at  the  center  of  which  any  imposing  ornament 
will  meet  the  eye  from  every  point,  however  distant  in 
the  streets  which  make,  their  angle  of  crossing  at  the 
center  thus  occupied.  These  vacant  spaces,  duly  mul 
tiplied,  and  rightly  managed,  will  not  only  be  so  many 
breathing  places,  but  will  add  immensely  to  the  variety, 
vivacity,  and  impressive  elegance  of  the  city. 

The  providing  and  right  location  of  a  sufficient  park, 
or  parks,  is  a  matter  of  still  greater  consequence.  For 
an  overgrown  city,  like  London,  two  or  three  are  not 


334  CITY    PLANS. 

too  many.  A  small  city  .will  require  but  one.  This 
one  too  should  be  neither  too  large,  nor  too  small,  but 
should  correspond  with  the  wants  and  proper  expendi 
tures  of  the  population.  And  as  it  can  not  be  known, 
at  the  founding  of  a  city,  how  large  it  is  going  to  be,  it 
would  be  well  if  a  considerable  section  of  ground  were 
held  in  reserve,  for  a  time,  to  be  sold  off  finally,  in  part, 
if  it  shall  appear  that  all  of  it  will  not  be  wanted.  It 
should  be  as  nearly  central  as  it  can  without  crowding 
into  the  spheres  of  business.  The  form  or  figure  will  be 
most  pleasing  if  it  is  irregular,  bounded  partly  by  curve 
lines,  partly  by  straight.  It  should  never  be  hung  like 
a  saddle  over  the  back  of  a  hill.  A  mostly  convex 
surface,  where  every  part  is  hidden,  by  the  convex 
lines,  from  the  sight  of  every  other,  can  never  be  inter 
esting.  A  level,  or  plane,  is  better,  but  even  that 
should  be  avoided  if  possible.  The  life  and  vivacity 
of  the  park  will  be  graduated  by  the  general  show  it 
makes  of  the  multitudes  walking,  driving,  or  at  play 
upon  it,  and  of  the  multiplied  colors  they  group  in  the 
picture.  And,  in  order  to  this,  the  lines  of  the  surface 
should  be  mostly  concave  lines,  or  convex  only  at  fit 
intervals  to  give  it  variety.  A. scoop  of  ground,  with  a 
high  rim  of  elevation  on  one  or  more  sides,  will  be  most 
advantageous  and  capable  of  the  best  effects.  If,  beside, 
there  is  a  stream  running  through  it,  or  pitching  into  it 
at  some  one  of  the  angles,  if  it  includes  here  and  there 
a  cliff  of  rock,  if  it  faces  mainly  the  south  and  not  the 
north,  and  provides  a  good  building  ground  on  every 
side  so  as  to  allow,  all  round,  a  solid  frontage  of  archi- 


CITY    PLANS.  335 

tecture,  broken  by  no  interval  of  swamp,  or  impassable 
jutting  of  rock,  nature  will  have  done  what  she  could 
to  make  it  perfect,  and  the  city  plan  will  have  also  done 
what  it  could  in  selecting  and  providing  the  ground — 
art  must  do  the  rest. 

It  would  be  a  matter  of  no  small  interest  now  to  go 
over  the  plan  of  our  own  city,  showing,  in  the  light  of 
the  general  principles  here  advanced,  how  many  excel 
lences  it  has  that  are  continually  regretted  as  irreparable 
defects,  and  how  many  supposed  excellences  that  are 
really  deformities.  But  this  you  will  easily  do  for 
}^ourselves  and  therefore  I  desist. 

Two  things  let  me  suggest  in  closing.  First,  the 
very  great  instruction  regarding  this  subject  that  would 
be  derived  from  a  study  of  the  best  planned  cities  of  the 
world,  such  as  Edinburgh,  Paris,  Naples,  and  especially 
the  ancient  city  of  Antioch,  which  appears  to  me  to 
have  been  as  nearly  perfect  in  the  plan  as  any  city  ever 
can  be.  If  Philadelphia  could  be  a  study,  it  might  not 
be  amiss  to  include  also  that — until,  at  least,  the  use  of 
it  longer  as  an  American  model  is  corrected. 

I  will  also  suggest,  secondly,  that,  considering  the 
immense  importance  of  a  right  location,  and  a  right 
planning  for  cities,  no  step  should  ever  be  taken  by  the 
parties  concerned,  without  employing  some  person,  who 
is  qualified  by  a  special  culture,  to  assist  and  direct. 
Our  engineers  are  trained  for  a  very  different  kind  of 
service,  and  are  partly  disqualified  for  this,  by  the  habit 
of  a  study  more  strictly  linear,  more  rigidly  scientific, 
and  less  artistic.  The  qualifications  of  surveyors  are 


336  CITY    PLANS. 

commonly  more  meagre  still — many  of  them  could  not 
even  draw  a  spiral,  if  it  was  wanted,  and  would  for  that 
reason,  if  no  other,  march  a  line  straight  up  a  hill,  even 
if  it  were  impracticable.  There  is  even  wanted,  in  this 
field,  a  new  profession  specially  prepared  by  studies 
that  belong  to  the  special  subject  matter.  If  a  city,  as 
a  mere  property  concern,  is  to  involve  amounts  of  capi 
tal  greater  than  a  dozen,  or  even  a  hundred  railroads, 
why,  as  a  mere  question  of  interest,  should  it  be  left  to 
the  misbegotten  planning  of  some  operator  totally  dis 
qualified  ?  Besides,  if  a  railroad  is  badly  located,  the 
track  can  be  altered,  but  here  a  mistake  begun  is  for 
ever  irreparable.  Most  human  errors  are  amended  by 
repentance,  but  here  there  is  no  amendment — an  ad 
vantage  lost  can  never  be  recovered,  an  error  begun 
can  never  be  repaired.  Nothing  is  more  to  be  regret 
ted,  in  this  view,  than  that  our  American  nation, 
having  a  new  world  to  make,  and  a  clean  map  on 
which  to  place  it,  should  be  sacrificing  our  advantage 
so  cheaply,  in  the  extempore  planning  of  our  towns 
and  cities.  The  peoples  of  the  old  world  have  their 
cities  built  for  times  gone  by,  when  railroads  and  gun 
powder  were  unknown.  We  can  have  cities  for  the 
new  age  that  has  come,  adapted  to  its  better  conditions 
of  use  and  ornament.  So  great  an  advantage  ought  not 
to  be  thrown  away.  We  want  therefore  a  city-plan ning 
profession,  as  truly  as  an  architectural,  house-planning 
profession.  Every  new  village,  town,  city,  ought  to  be 
contrived  as  a  work  of  art,  and  prepared  for  the  new 
age  of  ornament  to  come. 


IX. 

THE  DOCTRINE   OF   LOYALTY.* 


To  SETTLE  the  meaning  of  a  word,  having  reference  to 
great  moral  and  political  distinctions,  is  often  a  matter  of 
much  consequence.  Never  do  men  put  themselves  in 
the  wrong  so  badly,  or  with  so  great  seeming  perversity, 
as  when  they  have  only  confused,  half-partisan  ideas  of 
the  right.  Thus  it  is  enough,  at  such  a  time  as  this,  to 
make  thousands  disloyal,  that  they  have  only  random 
notions  of  loyalty,  or  such  as  come  to  them  only  in  the 
smoke  of  a  merely  contentious  use.  The  time  has 
come,  therefore,  when  this  word,  never  till  quite  re 
cently  applied  to  American  uses,  should,  if  possible, 
have  its  meaning  clearly  made  out  and  determinately 
settled. 

Heretofore  we  have  looked  upon  this  word,  and,  in 
fact,  have  even  spoken  of  it,  as  a  strictly  old  world's  word, 
capable  never  of  any  fit  application  to  the  conditions  of 
American  society.  It  supposes,  we  have  conceived, 
some  kind  of  hereditary  magistracy,  such  as  belongs,  in 
other  nations,  to  royal  and  princely  orders.  Thus, 

*  Undertaken  as  a  Discourse,  but  not  finished  in  time  for  the  occasion. 

29 


338  THE    DOCTL'INK    OF    LOYALTY. 

when  Mr.  Dana  published,  thirty  or  forty  years  ago,  his 
rather  famous  Article  on  the  need  of  Orders  in  the 
State,  to  impersonate,  and  connect  with  a  personal  sen 
timent  the  otherwise  vapid  and  dry  abstractions  of  law, 
his  regret  was,  in  fact,  that  we  had  no  place  for  loyalty, 
and  that,  on  our  footing  of  equal  society,  no  such  nec 
essary  homage  to  a  natively  personal  magistracy  is  pos 
sible.  He  had  probably  never  heard  the  word  loyal  ap 
plied  to  an  American  citizen,  and  had  no  conception 
that  it  ever  could  be.  All  the  great  sentiments  that 
figure  under  this  word  he  conceived  as  belonging  to  the 
poetry  of  a  more  poetic  society,  blessed  with  the  pic 
turesque  figures  and  distinctions  of  noble  orders.  And 
yet  we  find  ourselves  using,  now,  the  words  loyal  and 
loyalty,  as  freely  as  they  were  ever  used  by  Englishmen. 
We  think,  too,  that  we  mean  something  by  them,  and, 
in  fact,  are  having  as  great  sentiments  in  them  as  ever 
swelled  the  bosom  of  any  people  in  the  world.  And 
we  are  certainly  so  far  right  in  this  as  a  very  badly  con 
fused  use  of  the  wrords  allows  us  to  be.  We  may  even 
thank  God  in  the  fact  that  a  public  fire  has  broken  out, 
finally,  in  our  republican  society,  such  as  shows  the  ca 
pacity  of  fire  to  be  in  it.  We  have  seen  the  consciously 
great  sentiment  of  a  great  history  bursting  into  flame, 
and  we  hope  it  may  never  cease  to  burn,  till  history  it 
self  is  ended. 

We  are,  just  now,  a  kind  of  revelation  to  ourselves 
in  this  matter — surprised  by  the  majestic  figure  now 
displayed  of  a  self-devotion,  that  before  slumbered  and 
was  hid  in  the  recesses  of  our  republican  feeling  and  life. 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY.  839 

In  this  really  grand  waking  of  high  sentiment,  a  stranger 
might  sometimes  be  even  ludicrously  affected  by  the 
awkwardness  displayed  in  our  exaltations  ;  even  as  the 
blinded  Cyclop  plucks  up,  as  he  wakes,  the  pine-tree 
for  his  staff,  stalking  down  the  hill-sides,  with  unsteady 
feet,  and  bellowing  after  the  enemies  he  can  not  see  or 
seize.  We  lay  charges  of  disloyalty,  having  really  no 
clear  sense  of  what  it  is.  We  glory  in  the  character  as 
being  just  what  it  is  not.  We  claim  a  right  to  the 
name  of  it,  on  grounds  that  wholly  misconceive  it. 
The  gentlemen  of  the  law  assume  a  special  right  to  be 
its  expounders  and  patrons,  as  if  it  were  a  matter  be 
longing  to  their  sole  jurisdiction,  when  it  is,  in  fact,  no 
matter  of  legal  significance  whatever,  and  never  be 
longed  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  law  at  all. 

In  our  endeavor,  therefore,  to  settle  the  meaning  and 
place  of  loyalty,  we  shall  be  obliged,  first  of  all,  to  ex 
amine  its  relations  to  law,  or  to  show,  as  we  easily  may, 
that  it  is,  in  fact,  no  subject  of  the  law. 

A  somewhat  conspicuous  legal  advocate  of  New 
York,  Mr.  Curtis,  undertook,  a  short  time  ago,  to  en 
lighten  the  people  of  that  city  and  of  the  nation  gener 
ally,  by  a  discourse  on  this  particular  subject.  His  un 
necessary  tirade  against  "  the  frantic  declamations  of 
the  pulpit,"  does  not  incline  me  to  engage  in  a  contro 
versy  with  him.  I  only  advert  to  his  argument  be 
cause  it  is  a  convenience  to  have  some  presentation  of 
the  question  on  that  side,  which  undertakes  to  be  re 
sponsible  for  itself. 


340  THE     DOC  THINE    OF    LOYALTY. 

As  a  general  tiling,  legal  questions  will  be  more  ade 
quately  handled  by  the  legal  profession ;  but  when  the 
question  stated,  or  the  subject  matter  discussed,  does 
not  belong  to  the  law  at  all,  the  mere  claim  of  a  legal 
jurisdiction  gives  no  special  title  to  respect. 

I  undertake,  then,  to  say  that  the  law  has  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  loyalty,  and  that  it  is  not,  in  any 
sense,  a  legal  subject.  It  stands  on  the  same  footing 
with  patriotism,  honor,  and  bravery — the  law  has  no 
definitions  for  it,  and  never  had ;  takes  no  j  urisdiction 
of  it.  The  subject  is  purely  moral,  lying  in  the  field  of 
right  sentiment  and  religion;  just  like  other  matters 
that  are  analogous  in  some  of  the  other  relations  of  life. 
Thus  a  man  is  honorable,  when  he  is  true  to  his  own 
personal  convictions ;  filial,  when  he  is  faithful  and  du 
tiful  to  parents ;  pious,  when  he  is  obedient  and  true  to 
God;  and  in  just  the  same  way  he  is  loyal  when  he  is 
devoted  and  true  to  his  government.  And  the  law  has 
nothing  more  to  do  with  him  in  one  case  than  in  the 
others.  There  is  no  legal  definition  of  honor,  none  of 
filial  virtue,  none  of  piety,  and  there  is  no  more  any 
such  definition  of  loyalty. 

The  English  common  law  makes  a  distinction  be 
tween  what  it  rather  paradoxically  calls  "imperfect  ob 
ligations  "  and  those  which  are  perfect ;  meaning,  by 
the  imperfect,  those  which  are  too  far-reaching,  and 
deep,  and  subtle,  and  spiritual,  in  one  word,  perfect,  to 
be  administered  by  the  clumsy  faculty  of  human  tribu 
nals  ;  and,  by  the  perfect,  those  which  are  single,  and 
simple,  and  superficial  enough  to  be  maintained  by  the 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY.  3-il 

short  perception  of  human  evidences  and  judgments. 
Ninety-nine  one-hundredths  of  the  duties  of  life,  and 
probably  a  much  larger  proportion,  belong  to  what  are 
called,  by  the  conceit  of  the  law,  imperfect  obligations ; 
that  is,  to  the  class  which  are  so  perfect  that  God  only 
can  administer  them,  because  only  He  can  trace  the 
motives,  distinguish  the  evidences,  and  settle  the  judg 
ments  by  which  their  violations  will  be  fitly  redressed. 
Honesty  arid  dishonesty,  for  example,  kindness  and  un- 
kindness,  truth  and  untruth,  patriotic  and  unpatriotic 
action, — the  civil  law  can  do  nothing  with  these  and  a 
thousand  other  like  obligations,  save  when  the  violation 
is  by  some  outward  act  that  is  a  personal  or  public 
wrong,  and  can  be  investigated  by  human  testimony. 
Thus,  if  the  dishonesty  takes  the  shape  of  a  fraud,  if 
the  unkindness  takes  the  shape  of  cruelty  to  animals, 
or  to  one's  children,  if  the  untruth  passes  into  slander 
or  perjury,  if  the  defect  of  patriotism  runs  to  an  act  of 
conspiracy  with  the  enemies  of  the  country,  then  the 
civil  law  finds  a  case  within  its  narrow  jurisdiction,  and 
is  able  to  undertake  the  matter  of  redress — redressing, 
however,  the  fraud  never  as  dishonesty,  the  cruelty 
never  as  unkindness,  the  perjury  never  as  untruth,  the 
conspiracy  with  enemies  never  as  a  breach  of  patriotism. 
Exactly  so  it  is  with  loyalty.  It  belongs  to  the  class 
of  imperfect  obligations,  such  as  God  only  can  adminis 
ter,  and  the  civil  law  has  never  any  thing  to  do  with  it, 
till  the  disloyalty  runs  to  some  act  of  public  treason. 
And  then  it  punishes  the  disloyalty  as  treason,  never  as 
disloyalty.  "With  that,  as  such,  it  lias  never  any  thing 

29* 


342  THE    DOCTKIXE    OF    LOYALTY. 

to  do,  more  than  with,  dishonor,  envy,  covetousuess, 
uncharitableness,  anger,  hatred,  revenge,  censorious- 
ness;  for  which  it  has  no  definitions,  and  concerning 
which  it  has  neither  principles  nor  penalties. 

So  stands  this  matter  of  loyalty  as  before  the  law ;  it 
is  wholly  outside  of  the  law,  recognized  and  recogniza 
ble  only  by  the  law  of  God.  Therefore  when  this  gen 
tleman  of  the  law,  annoyed  by  the  suspicion,  or  sup 
posed  imputation,  of  disloyalty,  comes  into  the  field 
challenging  any  one  to  give  him  a  definition  of  it — that 
is,  a  proper,  legal  definition — protesting  that  he  will 
not  have  this  epithet  shot  at  him  as  a  "missile,"  unless 
by  some  one  who  can  tell  him,  in  good  legal  definition, 
what  he  means  by  it !  the  brave  air  of  confidence  he 
assumes  is  much  less  imposing  than  it  might  be.  It  is 
much  as  if  some  one  should  charge  him  with  being  a 
liar,  or  a  coward,  and  he  should  reply,  what  then  is 
your  legal  definition  of  a  liar  ?  and  what  of  a  coward  ? 
expecting  to  be  triumphantly  acquitted  till  the  said 
legal  definition  is  given !  It  will  occur  to  almost  any 
one  that  a  great  many  very  bad  vices  and  wicked  de 
linquencies  could  be  sheltered,  as  easily,  in  the  same 
manner. 

But,  happily  enough  for  the  truth,  he  is  bold  to 
make  out  the  definition  himself  which  he  thus  peremp 
torily  demands ;  and  for  this  it  is  that  I  am  particularly 
indebted  to  him  and  to  the  assistance  he  contributes  by 
a  legal  statement  of  the  subject.  It  will  be  understood 
beforehand  that  the  definition  given  depends,  of  course, 
in  some  way,  on  the  Constitution ;  for  there  is  no  so 


THE    DOCTRINE     OTT    LOYALTY.  343 

ready  way  of  excusing  the  vice  of  disloyalty,  or  any 
other  vice,  as  to  hold  the  Constitution  before  it — are 
not  all  the  vices  Constitutional?  He  saj^s,  "the  true 
conditions  of  American  loj^alty  are  to  be  found  in  the 
law  of  the  land,  in  the  duties  flowing  from  the  Consti 
tution  of  our  country."  Again,  "  no  duty  of  loyalty 
can  possibly  be  predicated  of  any  claim  that  is  not 
founded  in  the  supreme  law  of  the  land."  He  cites  ac 
cordingly  from  the  Constitution  what,  in  his  view,  con 
cludes  the  argument — "This  Constitution  and  the  laws 
of  the  United  States  which  shall  be  made  in  pursuance 
thereof,  and  all  treaties  made,  or  which  shall  be  made, 
under  the  authority  of  the  United  States,  shall  be  the 
supreme  law  of  the  land." 

Any  thing  then  is  loyal  which  is  constitutional,  or 
according  to  supreme  law  under  the  Constitution ;  any 
thing  disloyal  which  is  unconstitutional,  or  against  the 
supreme  law.  What  a  conclusion  this,  to  be  set  to  the 
credit  of  the  law,  or  to  stand  for  the  defense  of  society ! 
As  if  any  citizen  could  not  do  the  very  worst,  and 
wickedest,  and  most  detestable,  and  really  most  mis 
chievously  disloyal  things  against  the  government,  in  a 
way  that  is  perfectly  constitutional,  and  violates,  in  fact, 
no  law  whatever.  Besides,  if  the  Constitution  and  the 
supreme  law  are,  in  this  manner,  "conditions  of  loy 
alty,"  the  conclusion  appears  to  follow  that  whoever 
violates  the  Constitution,  or  the  supreme  law  under  it, 
is  ipso  facto  disloyal ;  that  every  one  who  takes  a  bribe, 
for  example,  or  an  extortious  fee,  or  sails  without  a 
clearance,  or  smuggles  a  piece  of  goods,  or  does  not 


34-i  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY. 

duly  execute  a  legal  process,  or  connives  at  a  process 
which  is  fraudulent,  is  equally  chargeable  with  disloy 
alty  on  that  account !  True  he  may  be  a  very  disor 
derly  person  in  these  things,  a  great  violator  of  the 
laws.  But  how  many  thousands  have  we  that  have 
been  violating  the  laws  of  their  country,  in  one  way  or 
another,  every  month  and  week,  and  perhaps  day  of 
their  lives,  who  are  yet  offering  even  their  bodies  for 
their  country  on  the  field  of  battle?  Doubtless  they 
would  be  much  better  men  and  truer  patriots,  if  they 
had  been  more  conscientious  subjects ;  but  there  is  no 
reason  whatever  to  conclude  against  their  loyalty,  in 
the  fa,ct  that  they  sometimes  break  the  supreme  law. 
If  they  so  far  violate  the  law  as  to  become  traitors, 
every  traitor  is,  of  course,  disloyal ;  but  not  every  dis 
loyal  person  is  a  traitor,  neither  is  any  violation  of  the 
law,  short  of  treason,  a  necessary  proof  of  disloyalty. 
It  may  be  such  a  proof,  or  it  may  not. 

Loyalty  then  is  no  subject  of  law  or  legal  definition. 
It  belongs  entirely  to  the  moral  department  of  life.  It 
is  what  a  man  thinks  and  feels  and  contrives,  not  as 
being  commanded,  but  of  his  own  accord,  for  his 
country  and  his  country's  honor — his  great  sentiment, 
his  deep  and  high  devotion,  the  fire  of  his  habitual  or 
inborn  homage  to  his  country's  welfare.  It  goes  before 
all  constitutions,  and  by  the  letter  of  all  statutes, 
to  do  and  suffer,  out  of  the  spontaneous  liberties  of 
right  feeling,  what  the  petty  constructions  and  laggard 
judgments  of  the  State  can  not  find  how  to  compel.  It 
does  not  measure  itself  by  what  the  Constitution  or  the 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY.  345 

laws  prescribe.  It  has  no  art  of  contriving,  for  itself 
and  others,  how  to  hide  from  the  country  behind  th& 
Constitution.  Loving  the  Constitution  warmly  enough 
to  even  die  for  it,  what  will  it  more  certainly  despise, 
for  just  that  reason,  than  to  plead  the  letter  of  it  as  the 
measure  of  its  obligation?  Doubtless  it  is  something 
not  to  violate  the  Constitution  or  the  statute  laws.  In 
ordinary  times,  one  might  naturally  enough  give  it  as 
the  definition  of  a  good  citizen.  But  genuine  loyalty  is 
in  a  higher  key,  at  such  a  time  as  this.  One  may  even 
be  a  great  stickler  for  the  Constitution,  at  such  a  time, 
and  be  only  one  of  the  most  pestilent  movers  of  sedi 
tion — more  poisonously  disloyal  than  he  could  be  in 
the  open  renunciation  of  his  allegiance.  The  loyal  citi 
zen,  at  such  a  time,  do  nothing  but  what  the  Constitu 
tion  or  supreme  law  of  the  country  requires  of  him ! 
Why  the  supreme  law  requires  not  one  of  the  duties 
that  are  so  genuinely  great  and  true  in  loyalty ;  to  vol 
unteer  body  and  life  for  the  country ;  to  stand  fast 
when  leaders  are  incompetent  and  armies  reel  away  in 
panic  before  the  foe ;  to  send  off  to  the  field,  as  bravely 
consenting  women  do,  husbands,  sons,  and  brothers, 
the  props  and  protectors  of  home ;  to  wrestle  day  and 
night  in  prayer,  as  Christian  souls  are  wont,  bearing 
the  nation  as  their  secret  burden,  when,  for  sex,  or  age, 
or  infirmity,  they  can  not  do  more ;  to  come  forward  as 
protectors  and  helpers  of  the  children  made  fatherless ; 
to  give  money  and  work  and  prepare  expeditions  of 
love  to  mitigate  the  hardships  of  the  wounded  in  their 
hospitals ;  to  vote  with  religious  fidelity  for  what  will 


346         'THE  DOCTRINE  OF  LOYALTY. 

nelp  and  save  the  country,  rising  wholly  above  the 
mercenary  motives  and  selfish  trammels  of  party — why 
the  supreme  law  requires  not  one  of  these,  nor,  in  fact, 
any  thing  else  that  belongs  to  a  loyal  and  great  soul's 
devotion ;  how  then  is  it  the  measure  and  bound  of 
loyalty  ? 

The  mistake,  at  this  point,  of  those  gentlemen  who 
come  forward  to  instruct  us  in  the  legal  definitions  of 
loyalty,  is  that  they  conceive  it  to  be  the  same  thing  as 
keeping  allegiance;  confounding,  thus,  the  tamest  and 
lowest  of  all  modes  of  political  virtue  with  the  highest 
and  noblest,  the  legal  with  the  moral,  compulsion  with 
impulse.  What  can  be  a  lower  style  of  citizenship 
than  that  of  a  man  who  does  not,  or  it  may  be  dares 
not,  break  allegiance  ? 

But  if  the  loyal  man  does  more  than  simply  keep  al 
legiance,  or  simply  hold  fast  the  Constitution,  he  will, 
at  least,  do  that,  a  certain  class  will  urge,  and  here  pre 
cisely  it  is  that  we  incur  so  many  charges  of  disloyalty 
— our  disloyalty  consists  in  nothing  but  our  fidelity  to 
the  Constitution.  As  the  Constitution  is  dangerously 
violated  by  the  executive  magistracy  of  the  nation, 
what  is  required  of  us  but  to  thwart  and,  if  possible, 
turn  back  that  magistracy — does  not  loyalty  itself  re 
quire  it  ?  There  could  not  be  a  greater  mistake ;  what 
is  more  frequent  than  a  disagreement  with  some  party 
or  administration,  about  the  constitutionality  of  this  or 
that  particular  measure?  Is  the  loyal  subject,  there 
fore,  justified  in  doing  every  thing  he  can  against  the 
government,  or  to  cripple  the  success  of  the  govern- 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY.  347 

ment?  By  the  supposition  he  is  in  the  minority,  and 
the  Constitution  itself  expects  him  to  suspend  his  judg 
ment,  and,  for  so  long  a  time,  defer  to  the  superior 
right  of  the  administration ;  else  there  would  never  be 
any  thing  but  anarchy  under  the  Constitution.  Is  it 
not  then,  do  you  ask,  his  right  and  duty,  in  such  a 
case,  to  raise  a  vote,  if  possible,  against  such  an  admin 
istration,  and  bring  in  a  better  that  shall  rectify  the 
abuse  ?  Sometimes  it  is  and  sometimes  it  is  not.  If  it 
happens  at  the  time  that  there  is  a  grand  rebellion  on 
foot,  throwing  off,  by  open  proclamation,  all  the  bonds 
of  allegiance,  and  tearing  the  nation  itself  asunder  for 
ever,  and  if  this  rebellion  waits  to  see  dissensions  raised 
and  will  even  value  more  a  defeat  of  the  administration, 
than  it  would  the  greatest  possible  victory  in  the  field 
—in  such  a  case,  any  citizen  of  a  large  and  steady  loy 
alty  will  be  slow  to  redress  some  partial,  or  partly 
questionable,  breach  of  the  Constitution,  by  a  course 
that  jeopardizes  plainly  even  the  existence  of  the  na 
tion  itself.  Such  kind  of  redress  for  the  Constitution 
he  will  even  declare  to  be  a  crime  of  faction  against  it, 
because  of  its  untimely  obtrusion.  All  the  worse,  if  it 
is  undertaken  as  a  party  measure — he  will  then  both 
disrespect  the  motive,  and  despise  the  recklessness  and 
almost  treasonable  perversity  of  it.  And  if.  the  en 
deavor  is  maintained  by  appeals  that  indicate  sympa 
thy,  or  almost  friendship,  or  it  may  be  even  connivance 
with  the  flagrant  treason  of  the  times,  he  can  not,  as  a 
loyal  man,  be  any  thing  less  than  profoundly  disgusted. 
The  instinct  of  a  loyal  heart  is  wonderfully  single.  In 


348  THE    DOCTRI'NE    OF    LOYALTY. 

the  hour  of  the  nation's  peril,  it  can  not  look  after  that 
and  party  together.  It  scorns  the  attempt  at  such  a 
time  to  divide  or  carry  double,  protesting — • 

"  Who  can  be  temperate  and  furious, 
Loyal  and  neutral  in  a  moment?" 

— let  us  light  our  nation's  enemies  and  destroyers  till 
they  are  crushed  everlastingly,  and  then,  if  we  can,  it 
will  be  time  to  amend  the  abuses  of  the  laws. 

While  putting  the  case  in  this  form,  let  me  not  be 
understood  to  allow,  or  at  all  believe,  that  the  Constitu 
tion  has,  in  fact,  been  violated.  It  can  not  be  main 
tained  that  the  Confiscation  Act  is  any  such  violation, 
unless  on  the  merely  theoretic  and  speculative  ground 
that,  covering  the  slave  property  of  rebel  masters,  it 
supposes  the  assumption,  so  far,  of  a  possible  ownership 
of  such  property  by  the  government,  at  the  moment 
of  its  lapse  into  freedom, — an  objection  that  no  one  can 
very  seriously  feel.  The  Proclamation  of  the  President 
is  even  less  open  to  objection,  because  it  is  no  civil  act 
at  all,  but  simply  an  act  of  war,  formally  based  in  the 
rights  of  war.  As  such  it  is  an  act  wholly  outside  of 
the  Constitution,  having  no  civil  character  at  all ;  save 
that  Congress  and  the  courts  of  law  must  needs  respect 
the  emancipation  executed  by  it,  as  far  as  it  is  de  facto 
executed,  or,  at  the  cessation  of  the  war,  may  be. 
They  will  only  be  so  far  obliged  by  it,  that  persons 
emancipated  and  taken  into  the  service  and  protection 
of  the  government,  can  not  be  remanded  back  to 
slavery,  without  a  cruel  violation  of  good  faith.  And 
if  the  war  continues  long  enough,  that  is,  till  the  whole 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY.  349 

domain  of  slavery  has  been  crossed  and  trampled  by 
our  armies,  and  a  half  million  of  the  slaves  have  been 
put  in  the  field,  it  will  plainly  enough  be  impossible 
for  the  institution  of  slavery  to  have  any  standing  of 
existence  allowed  to  it  longer,  except  in  the  loyal 
states.  Does  any  one  ask  what,  in  that  case,  becomes 
of  the  Constitution — what  of  the  Article  pledging  the 
suppression  of  slave  insurrections  ?  what  of  the  Article 
requiring  that  persons  held  to  service,  or  labor,  shall  be 
given  up,  when  taken  as  fugitives  in  other  states?  what 
of  the  Article  giving  to  slavery  a  three-fifths  right  of 
representation  ?  The  answer  is,  that  every  word  and 
line  of  these  Articles  stands  precisely  as  it  stood  before 
—the  Constitution  that  is,  is  the  Constitution  that  was, 
without  any  particle  of  abatement  or  change.  It  only 
happens  that  the  slavery  itself  is  gone  to  which  the 
Constitution  attached,  gone  by  a  power  outside  of  all 
civil  proceeding,  just  as  if  it  had  been  swept  away  by  a 
pestilence,  gone  just  as  "Indians  not  taxed,"  in  the  ex 
ception  clause,  are  gone,  or  will  be,  when  there  are  Indi 
ans  no  longer.  It  is  one  thing  for  a  Constitution  to  be 
cloven  down  and  a  very  different  thing  that  the  subject 
matter  to  which  it  attached  no  longer  exists.  Every 
soldier  of  the  rebellion,  for  example,  who  has  fallen  in 
this  dreadful  war,  had  his  rights  of  life  and  property 
guaranteed  by  the  Constitution,  but  the  war  has  put 
him  under  ground ;  the  result  being  that  the  guarantee 
stands  exactly  where  it  stood,  only,  for  so  many  as 
have  thus  fallen,  it  does  not  attach.  So  when  slavery 
is  dead,  by  the  act  of  war,  the  faith  of  the  Constitution 

30 


350  THE    DOCTKINE    OF    LOYALTY. 

will  stand,   only  it  does  not  find  the  matter  existing 
any  more  to  which  it  gave  its  pledges. 

Keturning  now,  from  this  brief  excursion,  to  the 
great  principle  that  loyalty  is  a  moral  affair,  graduated 
and  measured  by  no  mere  terms  of  allegiance,  or  statu 
tory  obligation,  some  one  may  remind  us  that  the  word 
itself  indicates,  in  its  very  composition,  a  close  relation 
to  law.  It  is  literally  and  even  etymologically  law- 
alty ;  how  then  comes  it  to  be  a  purely  moral  word, 
having  nothing  at  all  to  do  with  legal  definitions  and 
duties?  The  answer  is  two-fold;  first,  that  it  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  law,  only  in  the  sense  that  the 
law  has  nothing  to  with  it;  for  how  can  a  purely 
moral,  volunteer  devotion  be  enforced  by  legal  meth 
ods  ?  Secondly,  that  it  is  a  kind  of  homage  historic 
ally  older  than  statutes,  having  respect  as  to  a  law 
moral  or  primitive,  which  goes  before  all  enactments. 
Thus  it  is  a  great  mistake  to  suppose,  as  many  have 
done,  that  English  loyalty  has  respect,  directly  and 
simply,  to  the  persons  of  the  king  and  his  noble  orders. 
It  pays  them  homage  because  there  is  felt  to  be  a  law 
primitive  that  makes  them  and  creates  for  itself,  by  in 
heritance,  a-  magistracy  in  them.  And  that  homage  is 
law-alty,  because  it  accepts  them  as  the  organs  of  a 
grand  providential  order,  prior  to  all  history,  older 
than  all  statutes.  Just  so  there  was  a  Constitution 
here,  if  we  may  so  speak,  before  the  Constitution,  a  na 
tion  before  the  defined  Articles  of  nationality.  It  re 
quired,  in  fact,  as  good  and  high  loyalty  to  fight  the 
Providential  nation  out  into  independence,  as  it  now 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY.  351 

does  to  defend  it.  Nay,  it  required  more  loyalty  to 
make  the  Constitution,  than  it  ever  can  to  keep  it.  It 
was  that  old  providential  Constitution,  too,  prior  to  the 
Constitution,  prior  even  to  the  Confederacy,  that  gave 
the  Convention  itself  a  right  to  say  by  what  kind  of 
vote  the  Constitution  should  be  binding;  for,  if  the 
body  had  no  right,  stood  in  no  providential  order,  then 
the  vote  prescribed  never  had  or  can  have  any  binding 
force.  Loyalty,  in  this  view,  is  even  older  than  the 
Constitution ;  a  moral  bond  created  by  Disposing  Prov 
idence,  and  sanctified  to  be  the  matrix  of  the  corning 
nationality  and  the  Constitution  to  be. 

It  must  also  be  added,  as  regards  the  relations  of  the 
Constitution  and  the  laws  to  loyalty,  that  they  may  be 
so  handled,  by  perverse  construction,  as  even  to  make 
a  genuine  loyalty  impossible.  Just  this  was  the  effect 
of  Mr.  Calhoun's  doctrine  of  state  rights,  and  it  could 
have  no  other.  Loyalty,  so  far,  is  like  chastity;  the 
perpetual  boasting  of  a  right  against  it  makes  a  full  end 
of  it  shortly.  Further,  as  no  husband  and  wife  can 
once  name  the  word  divorce  without  making  sure  of 
the  fact,  so  no  people  can  so  much  as  talk  of  retroces 
sion  from  their  government  as  a  right,  without  having 
half  accomplished  the  fact  already.  Government,  like 
marriage,  is  either  a  finality,  a  state  of  supreme  order 
that  suffers  no  other  even  to  be  thought  of,  or  else  it  is 
nothing.  All  the  great  sentiments  that  may  gather  to 
it  and  fortify  its  life  depend  on  this.  And,  in  this 
view,  Mr.  Calhoun,  so  often  recognized  as  the  great 
statesman,  or  political  philosopher,  has  the  very  singu- 


352  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY. 

lar  merit  of  having  made  up  a  theory  of  our  govern 
ment  which  does  not  even  allow  it  to  be  government 
at  all.  It  is  only  a  congeries  of  little  supremacies,  that 
may  stay  together  as  long  as  they  please,  parting  when 
they  please;  a  general  sovereignty  by  leasehold,  till 
some  one  of  a  score  of  minor  sovereignties  may  see  fit 
to  stop  the  lease!  He  is  a  philosopher,  in  fact,  who 
never,  in  his  life,  conceived  the  foundations  of  a  gov 
ernment;  and  it  will  even  be  one  of  the  wonders  of  the 
coming  ages  that  he  believed,  as  he  really  appears  to 
have  done,  the  flimsy,  traditional  assumptions  he  takes 
for  his  first  principles;  another,  that  a  great  people, 
even  in  its  green  age  of  history,  could  have  discovered 
any  look  of  philosophy  in  the  wooden  platitudes  of  his 
argument.  Indeed,  it  is  one  of  the  bitter  mortifications 
of  this  dreadful  rebellion,  tha,t  it  is  the  price  we  pay  for 
shallow  doctrine ;  viz.,  such  as  gives  us  a  government 
having  no  final  authority — just  that  imbecile,  mock 
majesty  that  Mr.  Buchanan  so  fitly  represented,  when 
protesting,  under  his  official  oath  to  save  the  Constitu 
tion,  that  he  could  not  find  anything  to  do  for  it!  a 
government  challengeable  every  year  and  day  by  new 
threats;  bidding  always  for  impatience  and  defiance; 
impossible  therefore  to  become  a  fixed  center  of  hom 
age  and  loyalty ;  inevitably  doomed,  by  its  own  weak 
ness,  to  lose,  at  last,  the  scant}'  homage  of  allegiance. 

Dropping  now  all  farther  reference  to  the  Constitu 
tion  and  the  laws,  as  conditions  of  loyalty,  let  us  pass 
to  what  is  more  simple  and  refreshing ;  viz.,  to  the 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY.  6O6 

purely  moral  nature  and  quality  of  it,  where,  happily, 
we  shall  have  less  debate  and  be  able  to  advance  more 
rapidly. 

The  first  thing  that  occurs  to  us  here,  is  the  close 
affinity  of  the  loyal  sentiment,  with  that  which  attaches 
us  to  our  native  locality,  or  country.  It  is,  in  the  same 
way,  a  kind  of  natural  necessity,  upon  such  as  feel  nat 
urally,  and  is  almost  equally  undiscriminating.  Thus, 
we  remember  that,  conversing  once  with  a  sailor  at 
sea,  we  rallied  him  playfully  on  the  hardship  it  must 
be  to  him  to  return  to  the  rather  dismal  and  forlorn 
country  of  his  birth,  and  were  handsomely,  because 
touchingly,  answered — "Why,  sir,  if  I  had  been  born 
upon  some  nakedest,  most  barren  rock  of  the  ocean,  it 
would  be  dear  to  me."  The  woman  of  Sychar,  in  just 
the  same  way,  could  not  bear  so  much  as  the  hint  of  a 
more  "living  water"  than  the  ancient  father  Jacob's 
well ;  and  if  Jacob  had  left  a  government  instead,  she 
would  have  been  as  jealous  for  that  with  only  better 
reason.  Even  Jesus,  himself,  the  only  true  and 
grandly  real  cosmopolitan  among  men,  because  he  is 
the  world's  incarnate  Lord  and  Saviour,  proves  his 
proper  humanity  still,  in  the  distinctly  Jewish  feeling 
of  his  humanly  political  nature ;  calling  it  the  heavenly 
felicity  to  be  in  Abraham's  bosom,  and  exulting  in  ex 
pectation  of  a  day  when  many  shall  come  from  the 
East,  and  from  the  West,  and  from  all  remotest  Gentile 
peoples,  to  sit  down  with  Abraham,  and  Isaac,  and  Ja 
cob,  in  the  kingdom  of  Grod — using,  fondly,  this  very 
exclusive  image,  to  signify  the  grandeur  and  dignity  of 

30* 


854  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY. 

his  most  catholic,  universal  empire.  Now,  this  natural 
sentiment  of  country,  and  race,  and  fatherhood,  is  but 
a  very  short  remove  distant  from  loyalty,  running  into 
it  even  by  a  kind  of  necessity.  It  inaugurates  law  in 
us  before  the  law  is  written,  or  pronounced;  passing- 
through  all  codes,  and  polities,  and  constitutions,  when 
they  arrive,  to  shape  them  to  itself  and  flavor  them 
with  sanctity.  It  takes  hold  of  what  is  most  generous 
in  our  nature,  without  and  before  our  consent,  and  be 
gets  a  kind  of  homage  in  us  that  makes  us  patient  and 
brave  in  sacrifice  for  the  state.  Our  very  nature  is  po 
litical,  in  short,  just  as  it  is  domestic;  configured  to  the 
state  as  to  the  family,  craving  after  loyal  emotion,  even 
as  after  family  love.  Without  this  political  equipment, 
we  should  not  even  be  complete  men. 

Being  so  nearly  natural  or  close  to  nature,  the  loyal 
sentiment  is  free  of  course.  Allegiance  may  be  com 
pelled;  loyalty  is  a  volunteer  devotion,  else  it  is 
nothing.  One  requires  to  be  watched,  the  other  keeps 
watch  itself  for  the  nation.  To  make  sure  of  one  may 
require  a  legal  or  court-martial  investigation ;  the  other, 
goes  by  hearts' -full,  always  out  in  its  evidences,  never 
ambiguous.  A  man  stuck  fast  in  the  intrigues,  and 
swayed  by  the  clanship  of  party,  will  contrive  to  main 
tain  a  dastardly  and  mean  allegiance,  arguing,  it  may 
be,  for  the  Constitution,  with  only  pretended  concern, 
when  he  has  no  appetite,  in  fact,  but  for  some  party 
victory ;  deploring  the  wrongs  of  the  magistrates  in 
power,  when  really  he  is  only  feeding  his  appetite  on 
them ;  and  asserting  what  he  calls  his  sacred  right  of 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY.  355 

speech  only  to  stir  up  faction,  even  in  the  critical  hour 
of  the  nation's  peril.  But,  where  there  is  a  true  soul  of 
loyalty,  patience  with  the  miscarriages  and  even  the 
supposed  wrongs  of  government,  slowness  to  accuse, 
readiness  to  postpone  accusations  that  might  be  too  hast 
ily  made — any  thing  almost  will  be  yielded  to  for  the 
time,  that  may  fortify  the  cause  of,  the  nation  and  give 
it  victory.  Conscious  of  party  affinities,  swayed  by 
strong,  possibly  just,  prejudices  against  the  ruling  ad 
ministration,  there  will  yet  be  such  nobility  of  feeling 
in  the  true  loyal  citizen,  as  allows  him  never  to  bear  a 
look  of  sympathy,  or  surfer  a  suspicion  of  connivance 
with  disorder  and  rebellion. 

How  far  the  loyal  sentiment  reaches  and  how  much 
it  carries  with  it,  or  after  it,  must  also  be  noted.  It 
yields  up  willingly  husbands,  fathers,  brothers,  and 
sons,  consenting  to  the  fearful  chance  of  a  home  always 
desolate.  It  offers  body,  and  blood,  and  life,  on  the  al 
tar  of  its  devotion.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  political  worship, 
offering  to  seal  itself  by  a  martyrdom  in  the  field. 
Wonderful,  grandly  honorable  fact,  that  human  nature 
can  be  lifted  by  an  inspiration  so  high,  even  in  the 
fallen  state  of  wrong  and  evil ! 

It  is  also  one  of  the  noble  incidents  of  loyalty  that  it 
is  not  easily  discouraged.  It  has  the  most  "perdurable 
toughness  "  of  all  human  sentiments.  The  burdens  it 
will  bear,  the  sacrifices  it  will  make,  the  defeats  it  will 
suffer  without  surrender  to  them,  the  weary,  long,  long 
years  of  hope  deferred  and  desolating  war  it  will  un 
dergo,  still  fighting  on ;  the  mistakes  or  imbecilities  of 


356  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY. 

bad  counsel  and  ineffective  leadership  it  will  excuse  and 
go  on  to  repair — these  and  such  like  are  the  proofs  of 
loyalty,  and  history  is  full  of  the  sublime  examples  it 
has  given,  from  the  heroic  age  of  the  Greeks  down  to 
the  last  modern  records.  Men  will  faint  any  where  and 
everywhere,  sooner  than  they  will  in  what  they  do  for 
their  laws  and  liberties.  It  is  only  the  doubtfully 
loyal,  such  as  offer  weak  and  washy  protestations  of 
loyalty  in  the  place  of  an  earnest  devotion,  that  see  li 
ons  always  in  the  way  and  begin  to  talk  discourage 
ment.  The  true,  great  heart  of  loyal  men  is  rock  to  all 
waves  of  disaster.  Possibilities  left,  discouragements 
are  nothing.  Whoever  then  will  talk  to  us  of  his  loy 
alty  at  such  a  time  as  this,  let  him  see,  first  of  all,  that 
his  heart  is  tough  in  it,  and  then  we  shall  know  that  he 
is  qualified  to  speak. 

It  also  requires  to  be  noted  that  loyalty  is  a  senti 
ment  close  akin  to  honor.  I  speak  not  here  of  that 
mock  honor  which  some  men  hold  by  their  will,  when 
the  true  is  gone  out  in  their  character,  but  of  that 
which  is  true,  that  in  which  a  firm,  great  mind  honors, 
first  of  all,  itself.  All  great  and  true  sentiments  have 
this  kind  of  honor  in  them,  and  hence  it  is  that,  in  a 
great  war,  heroically  maintained  for  ends  of  patriotic 
devotion,  the  public  sentiment  is  raised  to  a  grade  of 
honor  so  much  higher  than  it  can  be,  under  the  bland 
ishments  of  peace  and  prosperous  security.  Every 
man  feels  that  he  is  exalted,  raised  in  honor  before  him 
self,  when  he  gives  himself  to  his  country.  And  this 
majestic  honor  of  the  mind  to  itself  is  the  power  that 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY.  3oV 

makes  a  hero.  There  is  even  a  kind  of  impassiveness 
in  it.  The  soul  is  put  in  armor  by  it,  as  if  the  bosom 
were  become  a  keep  of  iron.  Even  as  the  great  poet 
says  with  true  dramatic  insight — 

"  A  jewel  in  a  ten  times  barred  up  chest 
Is — a  bold  spirit  in  a  loyal  breast." 

All  the  romantic  virtues  move  in  the  ranges  of  loyalty. 
Hence  also  it  is  that  the  class  of  men  who  are  most 
doubtfully  loyal,  or  positive!^  disloyal,  are  commonly 
such  as  are  wanting  somewhere,  in  the  great-heart 
principle.  The  brute  masses  that  have  never  risen  to  a 
conception  of  honor,  the  hacks  and  expectant  spoils 
men  of  party,  the  wooden  decoys  and  trimmers  of  the 
pulpit,  the  sophists  and  mere  words-men  of  the  bar, 
whoever  wants  the  great-heart  altogether,  or  has  a  low, 
mean  side  of  a  heart  otherwise  noble — such  commonly, 
if  not  always,  are  the  natures  that  run  to  disloyalty ; 
they  make  up  a  class,  of  whom  it  might  generally  be 
told  beforehand. 

There  is  also,  we  must  not  omit  to  say,  a  very  per 
ceptible  and  very  close  relation  between  loyalty  and  re 
ligion.  For  what  is  religion  but  loyalty  to  God,  and  if 
there  were  no  letting  down  of  our  great  nature  by  sin, 
how  grandly  and  heroically  would  it  stand,  taking  sides 
eternally  with  God!  The  summit  of  our  nature  is 
capped  by  its  homages,  and  they  rise  in  dignity  accord 
ing  to  the  height  of  their  objects.  What  the  man  goes 
up  to,  thus,  or  after,  in  worship  and  devotion,  is  the 
measure  of  his  noblest  reach  and  capacity.  Cleaving 
thus  to  God  in  worship,  to  parentage  in  filial  piety,  to 


358  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY. 

great  names  in  reverence,  he  also  cleaves,  in  the  same 
natural  way,  to  the  state.  And  the  two  homages  in 
particular,  that  which  goes  after  the  state,  and  that 
which  goes  after  God,  are  so  clearly  related  that  we 
may  even  speak  of  loyalty  as  the  religion  of  our  polit 
ical  nature.  Nor  is  it  any  mean  token  of  our  poor 
broken  humanity  that  we  have  a  political  nature, 
mounting  thus  instinctively  towards  order,  and  justice, 
and  complete  society.  Besides,  the  state  itself,  erected 
by  eternal  Providence,  is  felt  to  be  a  throne  which  He 
maintains  and  crowns  even  by  His  divine  sanctions. 
We  do  not  commonly  speak  of  those  who  give  up  their 
lives  on  the  battle-fields  of  their  country,  as  dying  by 
martyrdom.  And  yet  it  is  the  martyrdom  of  loyalty 
unto  which  they  freely  gave  their  bodies,  and  know 
ingly  consented  to  the  sacrifice.  The  martyrs  of  re 
ligion  scarcely  make  a  sacrifice  more  real,  or  total, 
though  they  suffer  in  a  way  more  trying  to  constancy. 
"We  believe  too  that  there  is  a  relation  so  deep  between 
true  loyalty  and  religion,  that  the  loyal  man  will  be  in 
clined  towards  religion  by  his  public  devotion,  and  the 
religious  man  raised  in  the  temper  of  his  loyalty  to  his 
country,  by  his  religious  devotion.  The  two  fires  will 
burn  together  and  one  will  kindle  the  other.  How 
often  have  we  heard,  in  this  war,  of  men  who  have  ac 
tually  become  religious  on  giving  themselves  to  their 
country  as  soldiers !  The  religious  feeling  also  breaks 
out,  we  may  see,  unwontedly,  as  the  great  struggle  goes 
on,  in  our  speeches  and  public  proceedings,  our  procla- 
•mations  and  the  dispatches  of  our  victorious  generals. 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY.  359 

Oar  recognitions  of  God  are  easy  and  natural,  and  we 
draw  no  small  part  of  our  strength  from  the  confidence 
that  God  is  with  us  and  will  not  let  us  fail  in  our  cause. 
Much  has  been  made  by  Englishmen,  and  occasion 
ally  by  writers  of  our  own  country,  of  the  supposed 
fact  that  loyalty,  or  the  loyal  sentiment,  is  the  privilege 
only  of  states  that  are  under  the  sway  of  princely  fami 
lies  and  orders  of  nobility.  There  is  a  very  great 
practical  mistake  in  such  an  impression.  The  assump 
tion  is  that  loyalty  is  a  strictly  personal  sentiment, 
wanting,  of  necessity,  some  loyal  or  noble  person  to  be 
the  mark  of  its  devotion.  No  vague,  multitudinous, 
scarcely  apprehensible  object  like  a  nation,  or  people, 
or  even  a  constitution,  will  suffice,  we  are  told ;  it  must 
have  a  person,  or  throne,  to  embody  all  it  clings  to  so 
fondly,  in  the  native  land,  and  native  laws  and  liberties, 
and  be  the  mark  of  its  political  worship — this  to  enjoy, 
or  even  as  in  fealty  to  serve.  But  the  king,  autocrat, 
monarch,  or  czar,  is  taken  holcT  of  thus  by  loyalty,  be 
it  observed,  not  simply  as  being  a  person — little- is 
known  of  him  commonly  in  that  regard — but  he  is  ac 
cepted  simply  as  the  symbol-person,  in  whom  victory, 
and  law,  and  state  are  embodied.  Just  as  good  a  sym 
bol,  and,  in  some  respects,  better,  we  have,  as  republi 
cans,  in  our  flag ;  for  it  is  no  frothy  and  vapid  excite 
ment  that  stirs  our  headless  passion,  as  many  conceive, 
when  we  gather  to  our  flag  in  vivas,  and  swear  to  main 
tain  it.  Our  flag  represents  every  thing — the  nation  it 
self,  the  history,  the  laws,  the  successes,  the  honors  of 
the  past,  the  promises  of  the  great  future  unknown,  all 


360  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY. 

that  we  have  been,  all  that  we  can  be.  We  make  no 
idol  of  a  poor  rag  in  three  colors,  but  we  take  it  as  the 
one  all-sufficient  symbol.  No  royal  person  could  sig 
nify  as  much  with  as  little  confusion.  Most  royal  per 
sons  have  bad  passions,  weaknesses,  meannesses,  vices, 
that  awfully  mar  the  symbol-force  of  their  persons ; 
flags  have  none.  Loyalty  puts  nothing  into  them  but 
honors,  protections,  principles  of  justice,  promises  of 
good,  and  then  the  flag  it  clings  to  with  such  homage 
and  devotion  is  no  more  any  such  abstraction  as  many 
think  of,  when  they  sentimentally  deplore  the  want  of 
a  personal  objectivity  in  our  institutions;  it  embraces 
all  the  good  and  great  persons  of  the  past,  and  all  the 
blessed  hopes  of  a  good  and  great  future.  Therefore  it 
is  that  we  rush  to  the  flag  with  so  passionate  fervor, 
and,  with  no  particle  of  nonsense,  vow  to  die  for  it. 
The  symbol  our  loyalty  has  in  it  is  only  the  more  per 
fect,  that  we  are  distracted  by  no  personal  imbecilities 
and  vices,  claiming  homage,  in  part,  to  themselves. 

Loyalty,  then,  is  seen  to  be  no  matter  of  legal  juris 
diction.  It  is  a  great  moral  sentiment  that  marks  our 
political  nature,  and  is  next  in  dignity  below  the  senti 
ment  of  religion,  which  is  loyalty  to  God.  We  are  to 
judge  it  accordingly  and  all  seeming  defections  from  it, 
just  as  we  do  all  other  matters  of  a  purely  moral  sig 
nificance — such  as  truth,  honor,  honesty,  charity.  No 
man  has  a  right  to  complain  of  being  wronged,  in  the 
charge  of  disloyalty,  just  because  he  holds  the  Constitu 
tion,  or  does  not  break  out  in  some  flagrant  treason. 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY.  861 

He  may  even  be  more  basely  and  mischievously  dis 
loyal  because  he  does  not.  By  secret  connivances,  and 
factious  words,  and  party  cabals,  he  may  even  serve 
the  enemies  of  his  country  more  than  he  could  by  the 
open  mustering  of  treason.  Let  no  man  whimper  at 
the  charge  of  disloyalty,  then,  just  because  he  is  too 
much  of  a  dastard  in  his  crime  to  act  himself  boldly  out 
and  take  the  risk  of  a  traitor's  death.  The  meanest 
kind  of  disloyalty  is  that  which  keeps  just  within  the 
law  and  only  dares  not  perpetrate  the  treason  it  wants 
to  have  done ;  which  takes  on  airs  of  patriotic  concern 
for  the  Constitution,  when  it  really  has  none  for  all  the 
wrong  that  can  be  done  it  by  enemies  openly  fighting 
against  it.  Such  persons  must  be  judged  morally,  just 
as  we  judge  all  pretenders  and  hypocrites  under  false 
shows  of  virtue.  We  understand  them  well  and  read 
them,  for  the  most  part,  truly,  and  it  is  too  much  to.  ask 
that  we  shall  be  fools  for  their  sake. 

At  the  same  time,  there  is  a  possibility  of  doing  injus 
tice  in  this  charge  of  disloyalty.  If  we  mean  by  it,  as  we 
often  seem  to  do,  that  the  persons  charged  in  this  man 
ner  have  actually  broken  loose  from  their  allegiance,  or 
that  they  understand  themselves  to  be  really  disloyal  in 
their  intent,  it  will  often  not  be  true.  Moral  defections 
more  commonly  cheat  their  victims  at  the  beginning. 
They  do  not  understand  the  immoralities  in  which  they 
are  being  steeped,  and,  so  far,  do  not  intend  them.  In 
the  same  way  it  is  possible  for  large  masses  of  citizens 
to  be  fooled  by  the  disloyalty  they  are  in.  Some  of 
them  are  young  and  trust  themselves  to  leaders  who 

31 


362  THE    DOC  THINE    OF    LOYALTY. 

prey  upon  the  green  age  of  their  confidence.  Some  are 
ignorant  and  are  taken  artfully  by  catch  words  of 
which  they  have  really  no  understanding.  And  some, 
again,  it  must  be  admitted,  have  a  mean,  cold  nature, 
in  which  all  the  great  sentiments  get  a  place  of  lodg 
ment  with  difficulty.  They  can  hardly  mount  high 
enough  in  feeling  to  conceive  what  loyalty  is.  The 
sense  of  country,  family,  honor,  the  political  or  social 
sense,  runs  low  in  their  sterile  natures ;  all  the  great  in 
spirations  take  them  at  an  awful  disadvantage.  Mean 
time,  the  crabbed,  selfish  impulses  of  clanship  and 
party  are  a  lean  kine  of  poverty,  devouring  every  thing 
noble  or  generous  they  might  begin  to  feel.  They 
think  they  are  loyal,  it  may  be,  and  then  they  will  go 
to  the  Constitution  or  the  court  records  to  prove  it! 
But  the  great  heart — how  can  they  have  it  when  it  is 
not  in  them  ?  We  will  not  deny  the  bare  possibility 
of  a  tiny  loyal  sentiment  in  them.  But  who  that 
knows  them  will  ever  expect  more  ?  Who  will  even 
expect  them  to  know  that  they  are  disloyal  when  they 
are  ?  Going  after  cabal  more  easily  than  after  country, 
what  will  they  do  more  naturally  than  give  themselves 
to  cabal  and  call  it  their  country  ? 

We  see,  in  this  manner,  what  multitudes  there  may 
be,  in  every  community  or  county,  who  fall,  as  it 
were,  by  gravity,  into  the  disloyal  state,  without  in 
tending  it,  or  even  knowing  it.  What,  then,  shall  we 
say?  Shall  we  class  them  as  loyal?  We  can  not 
do  that.  The  best  that  we  can  do  for  them  is  to  call 
them  unloyal,  or  disloyal,  and  add  the  salvos  of  pity  as 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY.  363 

a  partial  qualification.  They  ought  to  be  condemned, 
and  they  must  also  be  pitied.  None  the  less  to  be 
pitied  are  they  that  they  are,  some  of  them,  persons 
who  have  come,  or  would  hereafter  come,  into  condi 
tions  of  power  and  public  honor;  for  the  day  is  at 
hand,  when  conditions  of  power  and  public  honor  are 
forever  gone  by  to  them.  When  this  rebellion  is 
finally  put  down,  as  it  most  assuredly  will  be,  then  the 
day  of  their  damnation  is  come.  They  can  now  return 
to  their  country,  but  they  must  do  it  soon.  To  come 
back  into  thev  range  of  its  honor  and  love  when  the  day 
of  trial  is  over,  is  impossible.  Then  it  is  too  late — the 
gate  is  shut ! 

At  the  same  time,  that  I  may  not  seem  to  speak 
with  unnecessary  harshness,  there  is,  truth  obliges  me 
to  say,  another  mode,  different  from  those  which  I  have 
named,  in  which  some  persons  have  been  carried  over 
to  the  verge  of  disloyalty,  by  motives  that  more  nearly 
entitle  them  to  sympathy.  I  speak  of  those  who  have 
taken  part  hastily  against  the  government,  from  a  false 
anxiety  to  save  the  government.  Who  of  us  that 
kept  our  sobriety,  did  not  cling,  for  a  time,  to  the  status 
in  quo  of  the  political  order  and  law  ? — the  same  which 
has  been  popularly  phrased,  "the  Constitution  as  it  is" 
—for  how  shall  we  ever  get  back  into  a  state  of  settle 
ment,  we  said,  if  the  terms  of  settlement  are  themselves 
'  gone  by  ?  We  did  not  perceive  that  the  status  in  quo 
may  be  entirely  changed,  and  the  "  Constitution  as  it 
is  "  remain  untouched  in  its  integrity.  '  We  saw  clear] y 
enough  that  slavery  is  one  of  the  most  assailable  points 


364  THE     DOCTRINE     OF     LOYALTY. 

of  weakness  on  the  side  of  the  rebellion,  and,  if  not  as 
sailed,  that  it  is  even  an  element  of  strength  in  the  -re 
bellion.  The  right  of  war  to  assail  this  point  of  weak 
ness  and  turn  it  on  our  side,  we  did  not  doubt ;  for  it  is 
even  a  first  principle  of  public  law.  As  little  did  we 
doubt  that  it  must  finally  be  done,  if  the  war  be  long- 
protracted  ;  recoiling  still,  with  instinctive  dread,  from 
the  terrible  necessity. 

First  came  the  Confiscation  Act,  then  at  length,  and 
probably  not  too  soon,  the  Proclamation — so  compre 
hensively  worded  that  the  President  seemed  to  assume 
the  right  of  a  general  emancipation,  by  his  own  civil 
edict.  Many  of  our  most  sober  and  thoughtful  citizens 
were  alarmed.  The  hold  of  law  appeared  to  be 
loosened,  and  every  thing  to  be  drifting  towards  inex 
tricable  anarchy.  They  took  ground  hastily,  coming, 
as  they  thought,  to  the  rescue  of  the  law.  They  even 
went  so  far,  in  their  zeal,  as  to  set  upon  the  govern 
ment,  in  a  way  that,  considering  the  time,  was  really 
not  loyal,  and  it  drew  them  farther,  even  than  they 
knew,  towards  the  rebellion  itself. 

It  is  impossible  not  to  yield  all  such  a  degree  of  sym 
pathy,  and  we  shall  do  it  the  more  easily  if  we  find  them 
ready  now,  at  the  more  advanced  stage  of  affairs,  to  ad 
vance  also  themselves,  and  modify  their  sentiments 
enough  to  meet  our  new  conditions.  Sticking  fast  in 
the  letter,  when  eternal  destiny  has  pushed  us  out  of  it, 
every  man  can  see  is  bad.  Under  the  doom  of  war, 
we  were  bound  to  just  the  crisis  we  have  reached,  proc 
lamation  or  no  proclamation.  It  was  right,  for  a  time, 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY. 

to  say,  "the  Constitution  as  it  is" — it  still  and  always 
will  be  right,  if  we  only  understand  how  entirely  the 
status  in  quo  may  be  changed,  without  any  breach  upon 
the  Constitution.  This  no  statesman  will  forbid  to 
change ;  for  the  real  statesman  is  no  bigot,  sticking  fast 
in  what  he  determined  rightly,  when  it  is  a  possibility 
forever  gone  by.  When  affairs  move  rapidly,  he  keeps  • 
up  with  affairs.  Nothing  is  now  left  us,  from  the  first 
nothing  was  finally  to  be  left  us,  but  to  champion  the 
liberty  of  the  slave.  We  do  not  understand  that  the 
President  meant  any  thing  more,  by  his  Proclamation, 
than  to  seize  on  the  right  of  war,  and  to  emancipate 
just  as  far  and  as  fast  as  war  could  execute  the  fact. 
If  he  did,  there  is  probably  no  court  in  the  land  that 
would  execute  his  edict  farther.  In  this  understanding 
we  can  all  be  agreed,  and -also  in  the  fact  that  the  river 
of  our  destiny  now  runs  where  it  must.  We  can  not 
tie  ourselves  to  the  legalities  longer,  and  reason  upon 
the  war  as  if  it  were  only  a  sheriffs  posse  out  for  the 
arrest  of  treason.  We  must  take  it  as  war,  grim  war, 
having  all  the  rights  of  war,  and  must  join  ourselves 
heartily  to  it  as  the  only  chance  of  our  future.  The 
debates  and  misgivings  are  all  over;  nothing  is  now 
left  us  but  loyalty  to  the  cause.  To  some  extent  we 
have  differed  honestly,  and  in  ways  that  do  not  exclude 
respect ;  now  there  is  no  place  for  difference  longer. 

It  may  not  be  amiss,  in  this  connection,  to  suggest 
that  constitutions  are  made  to  carry  on  government,  not 
to  carry  back,  rescue,  redintegrate,  government;  and 
that,  in  this  latter  kind  of  endeavor,  where,  to  simply 

31* 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY. 

go  by  the  letter,  reasoning  always  from  it,  in  the  pro 
fessional  manner  of  the  lawyers,  would  certainly  sacri 
fice  both  government  and  Constitution  together,  the 
real  statesman  will  take  a  freer  method  for  the  salva 
tion  of  both.  According  to  the  lawyers'  method,  the 
revolted  states  are  just  as  truly  under  the  Constitution 
now  as  ever;  there  is,  of  course,  no  legal  right  of 
blockade,  no  right  of  war,  but  only  to  send  a  sheriff 
and  make  service ;  no  right  to  distress  and  reduce  the 
revolt  by  touching  the  security  of  slavery.  But  the 
statesman  will  reason  differently.  "These  revolted 
states,"  he  will  say,  "  are  themselves  parts  of  the  docu 
ment  as  truly  as  any  of  its  articles.  Tearing  out  these 
from  the  document,  the  sovereign  order  itself  is  so  far 
broken  up.  If  they  can  not  be  recovered,  then,  as 
the  Constitution  has  another  field,  related  to  another 
neighborhood  outside,  with  new  dangers  to  encounter 
and  diplomacies  more  critical  and  complex  to  manage, 
and  a  treaty  of  peace  to  arrange  with  successfully  re 
volting  subjects,  (which  treaty  itself  must  even  be  a 
breach  of  the  Constitution,)  I  must,  in  true  statesman 
ship,  assume  a  certain  freedom  under  it,  or  the  letter  of 
it,  that* I  may  save  what  I  can  of  it,  even  though  it  be 
at  the  risk  of  some  damage."  Even  as  the  skillful 
ship-master  whom  the  storm  is  driving  on  a  lee-shore 
off  the  gate  of  his  harbor,  will  cut  loose  from  his  anchor 
and  put  himself  bodly  to  sea^  willing  to  save  the  ship 
without  his  anchor  if  he  must,  so,  for  the  Constitution's 
sake,  he  will  declare  the  blockade  of  rebel  ports,  inau 
gurate  a  quasi  war  with  the  rebellion,  permitting  an 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    LOYALTY.  367 

exchange  of  prisoners,  and  will  even  dare  to  revolu 
tionize  revolution  that  he  may  bring  it  under ; — all  this 
by  no  permission  of  the  Constitution,  or  possibly  even 
against  the  letter  of  it,  bravely  determined  to  save 
what  he  can  when  he  can  not  save  all.  In  this  we  con 
ceive  he  is  truly,  grandly,  because  practically,  loyal; 
when  if  he  wanted  courage  or  spirit  to  strike  off  thus 
from  the  letter  and  take  the  open  sea,  his  timid,  pusil 
lanimous  coasting,  would  be  scarcely  better  than  treason. 
I  have  only  to  add,  in  conclusion,  that  when  our 
present  struggle  is  over  and  triumphantly  ended,  as  it 
must  some  time  be,  then  it  will  be  our  thanksgiving 
and  joy  that  we  have  constitutions  and  laws  more  sub 
lime  and  sacred  than  we  ever  thought  them  to  be ;  a 
name  and  heritage  more  august;  and,  what  is  more 
than  all,  that  we  have  more  heart  for  our  country  and 
a  more  intensely  moral  devotion  to  its  honor  and  per 
petuity.  We  shall  then  have  passed  the  ordeal  of  his 
tory.  Our  great  battle-fields  will  be  hallowed  by  song. 
Our  great  leaders  and  patriots  will  be  names  conse 
crated  by  historic  reverence.  We  shall  be  no  more  a 
compact,  or  a  confederation,  or  a  composition  made  up 
by  the  temporary  surrender  of  powers,  but  a  nation — 
God's  own  nation.  These  throes  of  civil  order  are 
but  the  schooling  of  our  loyalty,  and  our  political  na 
ture  itself  will  be  raised,  under  the  discipline,  by  the 
sense  of  a  new  public  honor  and  morality.  What  loy 
alty  was  we  did  not  even  know  before;  now  we  shall 
know  it,  and  the  word,  at  once,  and  fact  will  be  Ameri 
can — not  American  only,  but  republican. 


X. 
THE  AGE   OF   HOMESPUN* 


IT  lias  often  occurred  to  others,  I  presume,  as  to  me, 
to  wish  it  were  possible,  for  once,  in  some  of  our 
historic  celebrations,  to  gather  up  the  unwritten  part 
also  of  the  history  celebrated ;  thus  to  make  some  fit 
account  of  the  private  virtues  and  unrecorded  struggles, 
in  whose  silent  commonalty,  we  doubt  not,  are  included 
all  the  deepest  possibilities  of  social  advancement  and 
historic  distinction.  On  this  account,  since  the  Histor 
ical  Address  of  yesterday  presented  us,  in  a  manner  so 
complete  and  so  impressive  to  the  feeling  of  us  all,  the 
principal  events  and  names  of  honor  by  which  our 
County  has  been  distinguished,  I  am  the  more  willing 
to  come  after,  as  a  gleaner,  in  the  stubble-ground  that 
is  left ;  nor  any  the  less  so  if,  in  gathering  up  the  fallen 
straws  of  grain,  I  may  chance  to  catch,  in  my  rake, 
some  of  those  native  violets  that  love  so  well  to  hide 
their  blue  in  the  grass,  and  shed  their  fragrance  undis 
covered.  I  think  you  will  agree  with  me,  also,  that 
nothing  is  more  appropriate  to  a  sermon,  which  is  the 

*  A  Secular  Sermon  delivered  at  the  Centennial  Celebration  of  Litch- 
field  County,  August  14,  1851. 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  369 

form  of  my  appointment,  than  to  offer  some  fit  remem 
brance  of  that  which  heaven  only  keeps  in  charge,  the 
unhistoric  deeds  of  common  life  and  the  silent,  undis 
tinguished  good  whose  names  are  written  only  in 
heaven.  In  this  view,  I  propose  a  discourse  on  the 
words  of  King  Lemuel's  mother : — 

PKOV.  31 :  28.  "Her  children  arise  up  and  call  her 
blessed" 

This  Lemuel,  who  is  called  a  king,  is  supposed  by 
some  to  have  been  some  Chaldee  chief,  or  head  of  a  clan ; 
a  kind  of  Arcadian  prince,  like  Job  and  Jethro.  And 
this  last  chapter  of  the  Proverbs  is  an  Eastern  poem 
called  a  "prophecy,"  that  versifies,  in  form,  the  advice 
which  his  honored  and  wise  mother  gave  to  her  son. 
She  dwells,  in  particular,  on  the  ideal  picture  of  a  fine 
woman,  such  as  he  may  fitly  seek  for  his  wife,  or 
queen;  drawing  the  picture,  doubtless,  in  great  part, 
from  herself  and  her  own  practical  character.  "She 
layeth  her  hands  to  the  spindle  and  her  hands  hold  the 
distaff.  She  is  not  afraid  of  the  snow  for  her  house 
hold;  for  all  her  household  are  covered  with  scarlet. 
Her  husband  is  known  in  the  gates,  when  he  sitteth 
among  the  elders  of  the  land.  She  openeth  her  mouth 
in  wisdom,  and  in  her  tongue  is  the  law  of  kindness. 
She  looketh  well  to  the  ways  of  her  household,  and 
eateth  not  the  bread  of  idleness."  Omitting  other 
points  of  the  picture,  she  is  a  frugal,  faithful,  pious 
housewife ;  clothing  her  family  in  garments  prepared 
by  her  industry,  and  the  more  beautiful  honors  of  a 
well-kept,  well-mannered  house.  She,  therefore,  it  is, 


370  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

who  makes  the  center  of  a  happy  domestic  life,  and  be 
comes  a  mark  of  reverence  to  her  children: — "Her 
children  arise  up  and  call  her  blessed." 

A  very  homely  and  rather  common  picture,  some  of 
you  may  fancy,  for  a  queen  or  chief  woman ;  but,  as 
you  view  the  subject  more  historically,  it  will  become  a 
picture  even  of  dignity  and  polite  culture.  The  rudest 
and  most  primitive  stage  of  society  has  its  most  remark 
able  distinction  in  the  dress  of  skins;  as  in  ancient 
Scythia,  and  in  many  other  parts  of  the  world,  even  at 
the  present  day.  The  preparing  of  fabrics,  by  spinning 
and  weaving,  marks  a  great  social  transition,  or  ad 
vance;  one  that  was  slowly  made  and  is  not  even 
yet  absolutely  perfected.  Accordingly,  the  art  of  spin 
ning  and  weaving  was,  for  long  ages,  looked  upon  as  a 
kind,  of  polite  distinction  ;  much  as  needle- work  is  now. 
Thus  when  Moses  directed  in  the  preparation  of  cur 
tains  for  the  tabernacle,  we  are  told  that  "all  the  wo 
men  that  were  ivise-hearted  did  spin  with  their  hands." 
That  is,  that  the  accomplished  ladies  who  understood 
this  fine  art,  (as  few  of  the  women  did,)  executed  his 
order.  Accordingly,  it  is  represented  that  the  most 
distinguished  queens  of  the  ancient  time  excelled  in  the 
art  of  spinning;  and  the  poets  sing  of  distaffs  and 
looms  as  the  choicest  symbols  of  princely  women. 
Thus  Horner  describes  the  present  of  Alcandra  to 
Helen : 

"Alcandra,  consort  of  his  high  command, 
A  golden  distaff  gave  to  Helen's  hand ; 
And  that  rich  vase,  with  living  sculpture  wrought, 
Which,  heaped  with  wool,  the  beauteous  Philo  brought, 


€» 

THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  371 

The  silken  fleece,  impurpled  for  the  loom, 
Eecalled  the  hyacinth  in  vernal  "bloom." 

So  also  Theocritus,  when  he  is  going  to  give  a  present 
to  his  friend's  bride,  couples  it  with  verse  :— 

"  0  distaff!  friend  to  warp  and  woof, 
Minerva's  gift  in  man's  behoof, 
Whom  careful  housewives  still  retain, 
And  gather  to  their  household  gain, 
Thee,  ivory  distaff !  I  provide, 
A  present  for  his  blooming  bride, 
With  her  thou  wilt  sweet  toil  partake, 
And  aid  her  various  vestes  to  make." 

If  I  rightly  remember,  it  is  even  reported  of  Augustus, 
himself,  at  the  height  of  the  Roman  splendor,  that  he 
wore  a  robe  which  was  made  for  him  by  Livia,  his  wife. 
You  perceive,  in  this  manner,  that  Lemuel's  mother 
has  any  but  rustic  ideas  of  what  a  wife  should  be.  She 
describes,  in  fact,  a  lady  of  the  highest  accomplish 
ments ;  whose  harpsichord  is  the  distaff,  whose  piano  is 
the  loom,  and  who  is  able  thus,  by  the  fine  art  she  is 
mistress  of,  to  make  her  husband  conspicuous  among 
the  elders  of  the  land.  Still,  you  will  understand  that 
what  we  call  the  old  spinning-wheel,  a  great  machine 
in  its  day,  was  not  known  till  long  ages  after  this; 
being,  in  fact,  a  comparatively  modern,  I  believe  a 
German  or  Saxon,  invention.  The  distaff,  in  the 
times  of  my  text,  was  held  in  one  hand  or  under  one 
arm,  and  the  spindle,  hanging  by  the  thread,  was  occa 
sionally  hit  and  twirled  by  the  other.  The  weaving- 
process  was  equally  rude  and  simple. 

These  references  to  the  domestic  economy  of  the  more 


372  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

ancient  times  have  started  recollections,  doubtless,  in 
many  of  yon,  that  are  characteristic,  in  a  similar  way, 
of  our  own  primitive  history.  You  have  remembered 
the  wheel  and  the  loom.  You  have  recalled  the  fact, 
that  our  Litchfield  County  people,  down  to  a  period 
comparatively  recent,  have  been  a  people  clothed  in 
homespun  fabrics — not  wholly,  or  in  all  cases,  but  so 
generally  that  the  exceptions  may  be  fairly  disregarded. 
In  this  fact  I  find  my  subject.  As  it  is  sometimes  said 
that  the  history  of  iron  is  the  history  of  the  world,  or 
the  history  of  roads  a  true  record  always  of  commercial 
and  social  progress,  so  it  has  occurred  to  me  that  I  may 
give  the  most  effective  and  truest  impression  of  Litch 
field  County,  and  especially  of  the  unhistoric  causes  in 
cluded  in  a  true  estimate  of  the  century  now  past,  under 
this  article  of  homespun;  describing  this  first  century 
as  the  Homespun  Age  of  our  people. 

The  subject  is  homely,  as  it  should  be;  but  I  think 
we  shall  find  enough  of  dignity  in  it,  as  we  proceed, 
even  to  content  our  highest  ambition — the  more,  that  I 
do  not  propose  to  confine  myself  rigidly  to  the  single 
matter  of  spinning  and  weaving,  but  to  gather  round 
this  feature  of  domestic  life,  taken  as  a  symbol,  or  cen 
tral  type  of  expression,  whatever  is  most  characteristic 
in  the  living  picture  of  the  times  we  commemorate,  and 
the  simple,  godly  virtues  we  delight  to  honor. 

What  we  call  History,  considered  as  giving  a  record 
of  notable  events,  or  transactions,  under  names  and 
dates,  and  so  a  really  just  and  true  exhibition  of  the 
causes  that  construct  a  social  state,  I  conceive  to  be 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  373 

commonly  very  much  of  a  fiction.  True  worth  is  for 
the  most  part  unhistoric,  and  so  of  all  the  beneficent 
causes  and  powers  included  in  the  lives  of  simply 
worthy  men  ;  causes  most  fundamental  and  efficient,  as 
regards  the  well-being  and  public  name  of  communities. 
They  are  such  as  flow  in  silence,  like  the  great  powers 
of  nature.  Indeed,  we  say  of  history,  and  say  rightly, 
that  it  is  a  record  of  e-vents — that  is,  of  turnings  out, 
points  where  the  silence  is  broken  by  something  appar 
ently  not  in  the  regular  flow  of  common  life ;  just  as 
electricity,  when  still,  goes  through  and  masters  the 
world,  holding  all  atoms  to  their  places  and  quickening 
even  the  life  of  our  bodies,  and  becomes  historic  only 
when  it  thunders ;  though  it  does  nothing  more,  in  its 
thunder,  than  simply  to  notify  us,  by  so  great  a  noise, 
of  the  breach  of  its  connections  and  the  disturbance  of 
its  silent  work.  Besides,  in  our  historic  pictures,  we  are 
obliged  to  sink  particulars  in  generals,  and  so  to  gather, 
under  the  name  of  a  prominent  few,-  what  is  really  done 
by  nameless  multitudes.  These,  we  say,  led  out  the 
colonies,  these  raised  up  the  states  and  communities, 
these  fought  the  battles.  And  so  we  make  a  vicious 
inversion,  not  seldom,  of  the  truth;  representing  as 
causes  those  who,  after  all,  are  not  so  much  causes  as 
effects,  not  so  much  powers  as  instruments,  in  the  occa 
sions  signalized  by  their  names — caps  only  of  foam, 
that  roll  conspicuous  in  the  sun,  lifted,  still,  by  the  deep 
under-swell  of  waters  hid  from  the  eye. 

If  then  you  ask  who  made  this  Litchfield  County 
of   ours,   it   will   be   no    sufficient    answer   that    you 

32 


374  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

get,  however  instructive  and  useful,  when  you  have 
gathered  up  the  names  that  appear  in  our  public  rec 
ords,  and  recited  the  events  that  have  found  an  honora 
ble  place  in  the  history  of  the  County,  or  the  republic. 
You  must  not  go  into  the  burial  places,  and  look  about 
only  for  the  tall  monuments  and  the  titled  names.  It 
is  not  the  starred  epitaphs  of  the  Doctors  of  Divinity, 
the  Generals,  the  Judges,  the  Honorables,  the  Gover 
nors,  or  even  of  the  village  notables  called  Esquires, 
that  mark  the  springs  of  our  successes  and  the  sources 
of  our  distinction.  These  are  rather  effects  than 
causes;  the  spinning-wheels  have  done  a  great  deal 
more  than  these.  Around  the  honored  few,  here  a 
Bellamy  or  a  Day,  sleeping  in  the  midst  of  his  flock, 
here  a  Wolcott  or  a  Smith,  an  Allen  or  a  Tracy,  a 
Eeeve  or  a  Gould,  all  names  of  honor — round  about 
these  few  and  others  like  them,  are  lying  multitudes  of 
worthy  men  and  women,  under  their  humbler  monu 
ments,  or  in  graves  that  are  hidden  by  the  monumental 
green  that  loves  to  freshen  over  their  forgotten  resting- 
place;  and  in  these,  the  humble  but  good  many,  we 
are  to  find  the  deepest,  truest  causes  of  our  happy 
history.  Here  lie  the  sturdy  kings  of  Homespun,  who 
climbed  among  these  hills,  with  their  axes,  to  cut  away 
room  for  their  cabins  and  for  family  prayers,  and  so  for 
the  good  future  to  come.  Here  lie  their  sons,  who  fod 
dered  their  cattle  on  the  snows,  and  built  stone-fence 
while  the  corn  was  sprouting  in  the  hills,  getting  ready, 
in  that  way,  to  send  a  boy  or  two  to  college.  Here  lie 
the  good  housewives  that  made  coats,  every  year,  like 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  375 

Hannah,  for  their  children's  bodies,  and  lined  their 
memory  with  catechism.  Here  the  millers  that  took 
honest  toll  of  the  rye ;  the  smiths  and  coopers  that  su 
perintended  two  han^s  and  got  a  little  revenue  of  honest 
bread  and  schooling  from  their  small  joint  stock  of  two- 
handed  investment.  Here  the  district  committees  and 
school- mistresses,  the  religious  society  founders  and 
church  deacons,  and  withal  a  great  many  sensible, 
wise-headed  men,  who  read  a  weekly  newspaper,  loved 
George  Washington  and  their  country,  and  had  never  a 
thought  of  going  to  the  General  Assembly  !  These  are 
the  men  and  women  that  made  Litchfield  County. 
Who  they  are,  by  name,  we  can  not  tell — no  matter 
who  they  are — we  should  be  none  the  wiser  if  we  could 
name  them,  they  themselves  none  the  more  honorable. 
Enough  that  they  are  the  king  Lemuels  and  their 
queens,  of  the  good  old  time  gone  by — kings  and 
queens  of  Homespun,  out  of  whom  we  draw  our  royal 
lineage. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  great  advance  in  human  society, 
indicated  by  a  transition  from  the  dress  of  skins  to  that 
of  cloth — an  advance  of  so  great  dignity,  that  spinning 
and  weaving  were  looked  upon  as  a  kind  of  fine  art,  or 
polite  accomplishment.  Another  advance,  and  one 
that  is  equally  remarkable,  is  indicated  by  the  transi 
tion  from  a  dress  of  homespun  to  a  dress  of  factory 
cloths,  produced  by  machinery  and  obtained  by  the  ex 
changes  of  commerce,  at  home  or  abroad.  This  transi 
tion  we  are  now  making,  or  rather,  I  should  say,  it  is 
already  so  far  made  that  the  very  terms,  "  domestic 


376  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

manufacture"  have  quite  lost  their  meaning;  being 
applied  to  that  which  is  neither  domestic,  as  being 
made  in  the  house,  nor  manufacture,  as  being  made  by 
the  hands. 

This  transition  from  mother  and  daughter  power  to 
water  and  steam-power  is  a  great  one,  greater  by  far 
than  many  have  as  yet  begun  to  conceive — one  that  is 
to  carry  with  it  a  complete  revolution  of  domestic  life" 
and  social  manners.  If,  in  this  transition,  there  is 
something  to  regret,  there  is  more,  I  trust,  to  desire. 
If  it  carries  away  the  old  simplicity,  it  must  also  open 
higher  possibilities  of  culture  and  social  ornament. 
The  principal  danger  is,  that,  in  removing  the  rough 
necessities  of  the  homespun  age,  it  may  take  away  also 
the  severe  virtues  and  the  homely  but  deep  and  true 
piety  by  which,  in  their  blessed  fruits,  as  we  are  all  here 
testifying,  that  age  is  so  honorably  distinguished.  Be 
the  issue  what  it  may,  good  or  bad,  hopeful  or  unhope 
ful,  it  has  come;  it  is  already  a  fact,  and  the  conse 
quences  must  follow. 

If  our  sons  and  daughters  should  assemble,  a  hund 
red  years  hence,  to  hold  another  celebration  like  this, 
they  will  scarcely  be  able  to  imagine  the  Arcadian  pic 
tures  now  so  fresh  in  the  memory  of  many  of  us,  though 
to  the  younger  part  already  matters  of  hearsay  more 
than  of  personal  knowledge  or  remembrance.  Every 
thing  that  was  most  distinctive  of  the  old  homespun 
mode  of  life  will  then  have  passed  away.  The  spin 
ning-wheels  of  wool  and  flax,  that  used  to  buzz  so  fa 
miliarly  in  the  childish  ears  of  some  of  us,  will  be 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  377 

heard  no  more  forever ;  seen  no  more,  in  fact,  save  in 
the  halls  of  the  Antiquarian  Societies,  where  the  deli 
cate  daughters  will  be  asking,  what  these  strange  ma 
chines  are,  and  how  they  were  made  to  go  ?  The  huge, 
hewn-timber  looms,  that  used  to  occupy  a  room  by 
themselves  in  the  farm-houses,  will  be  gone,  cut  up  for 
cord  wood,  and  their  heavy  thwack,  beating  up  the 
woof,  will  be  heard  no  more  by  the  passer  by — not 
even  the  Antiquarian  Halls  will  find  room  to  harbor  a 
specimen.  The  long  strips  of  linen,  bleaching  on  the 
grass,  and  tended  by  a  sturdy  maiden,  sprinkling  them, 
each  hour,  from  her  water-can,  under  a  broiling  sun — 
thus  to  prepare  the  Sunday  linen  for  her  brothers  and 
her  own  wedding  outfit,  will  have  disappeared,  save  as 
they  return  to  fill  a  picture  in  some  novel  or  ballad  of 
the  old  time.  The  tables  will  be  spread  with  some 
cunning,  water-power  Silesia  not  yet  invented,  or  per 
chance  with  some  meaner  fabric  from  the  cotton  mills. 
The  heavy  Sunday  coats  that  grew  on  sheep  individu 
ally  remembered — more  comfortably  carried,  in  warm 
weather,  on  the  arm — and  the  specially  fine-striped  blue 
and  white  pantaloons  of  linen  just  from  the  loom,  will 
no  longer  be  conspicuous  in  processions  of  footmen  go 
ing  to  their  homespun  worship,  but  will  have  given 
place  to  processions  of  broadcloth  gentlemen  lolling  in 
the  upholstery  of  their  coaches,  able  to  worship,  it  may 
be,  in  a  more  cultivated  figure,  but  not  with  a  finer  sin 
cerity.  The  churches,  too,  that  used  to  be  simple 
brown  meeting-houses  covered  with  rived  clapboards 
of  oak,  will  have  come  down,  mostly,  from  the  bleak 

32* 


378  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

hill-tops  into  the  close  villages  and  populous  towns  that 
crowd  the  waterfalls  and  the  railroads;  and  the  old 
burial  places,  where  the  fathers  sleep,  will  be  left  to 
their  lonely  altitude — token,  shall  we  say,  of  an  age 
that  lived  as  much  nearer  to  heaven  and  as  much  less 
under  the  world.  The  change  will  be  complete. 
Would  that  we  might  raise  some  worthy  monument  to 
a  social  state,  then  to  be  passed  by,  worthy,  in  all  future 
time,  to  be  held  in  the  dearest  reverence. 

It  may  have  seemed  extravagant  or  fantastic,  to 
some  of  you,  that  I  should  think  to  give  a  character  of 
the  century  now  past,  under  the  one  article  of  home 
spun.  It  certainly  is  not  the  only,  or  in  itself  the  chief 
article  of  distinction ;  and  yet  we  shall  find  it  to  be  a 
distinction  that  runs  through  all  others,  and  gives  a 
color  to  the  whole  economy  of  life  and  character,  in  the 
times  of  which  we  speak. 

Thus,  if  the  clothing  is  to  be  manufactured  in  the 
house,  then  flax  will  be  grown  in  the  plowed  land,  and 
sheep  will  be  raised  in  the  pasture,  and  the  measure  of 
the  flax  ground,  and  the  number  of  the  flock,  will  cor 
respond  with  the  measure  of  the  house  market — the 
number  of  the  sons  and  daughters  to  be  clothed — so 
that  the  agriculture  out  of  doors  will  map  the  family  in 
doors.  Then  as  there  is  no  thought  of  obtaining  the 
articles  of  clothing,  or  dress,  by  exchange ;  as  there  is 
little  passing  of  money,  and  the  habit  of  exchange  is 
feebly  developed ;  the  family  will  be  fed  on  home-grown 
products,  buckwheat,  maize,  rye,  or  whatever  the  soil 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  379 

will  yield.  And  as  carriages  are  a  luxury  introduced 
only  with  exchanges,  the  lads  will  be  going  back  and 
forth  to  the  mill  on  horseback,  astride  the  fresh  grists, 
to  keep  the  mouths  in  supply.  The  meat  market  will 
be  equally  domestic,  a  kind  of  quarter-master  slaughter 
and  supply,  laid  up  in  the  cellar,  at  fit  times  in  the 
year.  The  daughters  that,  in  factory  days,  would  go 
abroad  to  join  the  female  conscription  of  the  cotton 
mill,  will  be  kept  in  the  home  factory,  or  in  that  of 
some  other  family,  and  so  in  the  retreats  of  domestic 
life.  And  so  it  will  be  seen,  that  a  form  of  life  which 
includes  almost  every  point  of  economy,  centers  round 
the  article  of  homespun  dress,  and  is  by  that  determ 
ined.  Given  the  fact  that  a  people  spin  their  own 
dress,  you  have  in  that  fact  a  whole  volume  of 
characteristics.  They  may  be  shepherds  dwelling  in 
tents,  or  they  may  build  them  fixed  habitations,  but  the 
distinction  given  will  show  them  to  be  a  people  who 
are  not  in  trade,  whose  life  centers  in  the  family,  home 
bred  in  their  manners,  primitive  and  simple  in  their 
character,  inflexible  in  their  piety,  hospitable  without 
show,  intelligent  without  refinement.  And  so  it  will 
be  seen  that  our  homespun  fathers  and  mothers  made  a 
Puritan  Arcadia  among  these  hills,  answering  to  the 
picture  which'  Polybius,  himself  an  Arcadian,  gave  of 
his  countrymen,  when  he  said  that  they  had,  "through 
out  Greece,  a  high  and  honorable  reputation ;  not  only 
on  account  of  their  hospitality  to  strangers,  and  their 
benevolence  towards  all  men,  but  especially  on  account 
of  their  piety  towards  the  Divine  Being." 


880  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

Thus,  if  we  speak  of  what,  in  the  polite  world,  is 
called  society,  our  homespun  age  had  just  none  of  it — 
and  perhaps  the  more  of  society  for  that  reason ;  be 
cause  what  they  had  was  separate  from  all  the  polite 
fictions  and  showy  conventionalities  of  the  world.  I 
speak  not  here  of  the  rude  and  promiscuous  gatherings 
connected  so  often  with  low  and  vulgar  excesses ;  the 
military  trainings,  the  huskings,  the  raisings,  commonly 
ended  with  a  wrestling  match.  These  were  their  dissi 
pations,  and  perhaps  they  were  about  as  good  as  any. 
The  apple-paring  and  quilting  frolics,  you  may  set 
down,  if  you  will,  as  the  polka-dances  and  masquerades 
of  homespun.  If  they  undertook  a  formal  entertain 
ment  of  any  kind,  it  was  commonly  stiff  and  quite  un 
successful.  But  when  some  two  queens  of  the  spindle, 
specially  fond  of  each  other,  instead  of  calling  back  and 
forth  with  a  card-case  in  their  hand,  agreed  to  "join 
works,"  as  it  was  called,  for  a  week  or  two,  in  spinning, 
enlivening  their  talk  by  the  rival  buzz  of  their  wheels, 
and,  when  the  two  skeins  were  done,  spending  the  rest 
of  the  day  in  such  kind  of  recreation  as  pleased  them, 
this  to  them  was  real  society,  and,  so  far,  a  good  type 
of  all  the  society  they  had.  It  was  the  society  not  of 
the  "Nominalists,  but  of  the  Realists ;  society  in  or  after 
work;  spontaneously  gathered,  for  the  most  part,  in 
terms  of  elective  affinity — foot  excursions  of  young 
people,  or  excursions  on  horseback,  after  the  haying,  to 
the  t£ps  of  the  neighboring  mountains ;  boatings  on 
the  river  or  the  lake,  by  moonlight,  filling  the  wooded 
shores  and  the  recesses  of  the  hills  with  lively  echoes; 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  381 

evening  schools  of  sacred  music,  in  which  the  music  is 
not  so  much  sacred  as  preparing  to  be ;  evening  circles 
of  young  persons,  falling  together,  as  they  imagine,  by 
accident,  round  some  village  queen  of  song,  and  chasing 
away  the  time  in  ballads  and  glees  so  much  faster  than 
they  wish,  that  just  such  another  accident  is  like  to 
happen  soon ;  neighbors  called  in  to  meet  the  minister 
and  talk  of  both  worlds  together,  and,  if  he  is  limber 
enough  to  suffer  it,  in  such  happy  mixtures,  that  both 
are  melted  into  one. 

But  most  of  all  to  be  remembered  are  those  friendly 
circles,  gathered  so  often  round  the  winter's  fire — not 
the  stove,  but  the  fire,  the  brightly  blazing,  hospitable 
fire.  In  the  early  dusk,  the  home  circle  is  drawn  more 
closely  and  quietly  round  it ;  but  a  good  neighbor  and 
his  wife  drop  in  shortly,  from  over  the  way,  and  the 
circle  begins  to  spread.  Next,  a  few  young  folk  from 
the  other  end  of  the  village,  entering  in  brisker  mood, 
find  as  many  more  chairs  set  in  as  wedges  into  the  pe 
riphery  to  receive  them  also.  And  then  a  friendly 
sleigh-full  of  old  and  young,  that  have  come  down  from 
the  hill  to  spend  an  hour  or  two,  spread  the  circle 
again,  moving  it  still  farther  back  from  the  fire;  and 
the  fire  blazes  just  as  much  higher  and  more  brightly, 
having  a  new  stick  added  for  every  guest.  There  is  no 
restraint,  certainly  no  affectation  of  style.  They  tell 
stories,  they  laugh,  they  sing.  They  are  serious  and 
gay  by  turns,  or  the  young  folks  go  on  with  some  play, 
while  the  fathers  and  mothers  are  discussing  some  hard 
point  of  theology  in  the  minister's  last  sermon  ;  or  per- 


382  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

haps  the  great  danger  coming  to  sound  morals  from  the 
multiplication  of  turnpikes  and  newspapers!  Mean 
time  the  good  housewife  brings  out  her  choice  stock  of 
home-grown  exotics,  gathered  from  three  realms, 
doughnuts  from  the  pantry,  hickory-nuts  from  the 
chamber,  and  the  nicest,  smoothest  apples  from  the 
cellar ;  all  which,  including,  I  suppose  I  must  add,  the 
rather  unpoetic  beverage  that  gave  its  acid  smack  to 
the  ancient  hospitality,  are  discussed  as  freely,  with  no 
fear  of  consequences.  And  then,  as  the  tall  clock  in 
the  corner  of  the  room  ticks  on  majestically  towards 
nine,  the  conversation  takes,  it  may  be,  a  little  more  se 
rious  turn,  and  it  is  suggested  that  a  very  happy  even 
ing  may  fitly  be  ended  with  a  prayer.  Whereupon 
the  circle  breaks  up  with  a  reverent,  congratulative 
look  on  every  face,  which  is  itself  the  truest  language 
of  a  social  nature  blessed  in  human  fellowship. 

Such,  in  general,  was  the  society  of  the  homespun 
age.  It  was  not  that  society  that  puts  one  in  connec 
tion  with  the  great  world  of  letters,  or  fashion,  or 
power,  raising  as  much  the  level  of  his  consciousness 
and  the  scale  and  style  of  his  action ;  but  it  was  society 
back  of  the  world,  in  the  sacred  retreats  of  natural  feel 
ing,  truth  and  piety. 

Descending  from  the  topic  of  society  in  general  to 
one  more  delicate,  that  of  marriage  and  the  tender  pas 
sion  and  the  domestic  felicities  of  the  homespun  age, 
the  main  distinction  here  to  be  noted  is,  that  marriages 
were  commonly  contracted  at  a  much  earlier  period  in 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  383 

life  than  now.  Not  because  the  habit  of  the  time  was 
more  romantic  or  less  prudential,  but  because  a  princi 
ple  more  primitive  and  closer  to  the  beautiful  simplicity 
of  nature  is  yet  in  vogue,  viz.,  that  women  are  giyen 
by  the  Almighty,  not  so  much  to  help  their  husbands 
spends,  living,  as  to  help  them  get  one.  Accordingly, 
the  ministers  were  always  very  emphatic,  as  I  remem 
ber,  in  their  marriage  ceremonies,  on  the  ancient  idea, 
that  the  woman  was  given  to  the  man  to  be  a  help, 
meet  for  him.  Had  they  supposed,  on  the  contrary, 
what  many  appear  in  our  day  to  assume,  that  the  wo 
man  is  given  to  the  man  to  enjoy  his  living,  I  am  not 
sure  that  a  certain  way  they  had  of  adhering  always  to 
the  reason  of  things,  would  not  have  set  them  at  feud 
with  the  custom  that  requires  the  fee  of  the  man,  insist 
ing  that  it  go  to  the  charge  of  the  other  party,  where, 
in  such  a  case,  it  properly  belongs.  Now  exactly  this 
notion  of  theirs,  I  confess,  appears  to  me  to  be  the  most 
sentimental  and  really  the  most  romantic  notion  possi 
ble  of  marriage.  What  more  beautiful  embodiment  is 
there  on  this  earth,  of  true  sentiment,  than  the  young- 
wife  who  has  given  herself  to  a  man  in  his  weakness, 
to  make  him  strong ;  to  enter  into  the  hard  battle  of 
his  life  and  bear  the  brunt  of  it  with  him ;  to  go  down 
with  him  in  disaster,  if  he  fails,  and  cling  to  him  for 
what  he  is ;  to  rise  with  him,  if  he  rises,  and  share  a 
two-fold  joy  with  him  in  the  competence  achieved ;  re 
membering,  both  of  them,  how  it  grew  by  little  and 
little,  and  by  what  methods  of  frugal  industry  it  was 
nourished ;  having  it  also,  not  as  his,  but  theirs,  the 


384  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

reward  of  their  common  perseverance,  and  the  token  of 
their  consolidated  love.  And  if  this  be  the  most  heroic 
sentiment  in  the  woman,  it  certainly  was  no  fault  in 
the  man  of  homespun  to  look  for  it.  And,  in  this 
view,  the  picture  given  of  his  suit,  by  a  favorite  poetess 
of  our  own,  is  as  much  deeper  in  poetry  as  it  is  closer 
to  the  simplicity  of  nature. 

"Behold, 

The  ruddy  damsel  singeth  at  her  wheel. 
While  by  her  side  the  rustie  lover  sits, 
Perchance  his  shrewd  eye  secretly  doth  count 
The  mass  of  skeins  that,  hanging  on  the  wall, 
Increaseth  day  by  day.     Perchance  his  thought 
(For  men  have  wiser  minds  than  women,  sure,) 
Is  calculating  what  a  thrifty  wife 
The  maid  will  make." 

Do  not  accuse  our  rustic  here  too  hastily,  in  the 
rather  homely  picture  he  makes;  for  sometimes  it  is 
the  way  of  homely  things,  that  their  poetry  is  not 
seen,  only  because  it  is  deepest.  The  main  distinction 
between  him  and  the  more  plausible  romantic  class  of 
suitors  is,  that  his  passion  has  penetrated  beyond  the 
fancy,  into  the  reason,  and  made  the  sober  sense  itself  a 
captive.  Do  you  say  that  a  man  has  not  a  heart  be 
cause  it  is  shut  up  in  the  casement  of  his  body  and  is 
not  seen,  beating  on  the  skin  ?  As  little  reason  have 
you  here  to  blame  a  fault  of  passion,  because  it  throbs 
under  the  strong,  defensive  ribs  of  prudence.  It  is  the 
froth  of  passion  that  makes  a  show  so  romantic  on  the 
soul's  surfaces — the  truth  of  it  that  pierces  inmost  re 
alities.  So,  I  suppose,  our  poetess  would  say  that  her 
young  gentleman  of  homespun  thinks  of  a  wife,  not  of 


THE     AGE     OF    HOMESPUN.  385 

a  holiday  partner  who  may  come  into  his  living  in  a 
contract  of  expenditure.  He  believes  in  woman  ac 
cording  to  God's  own  idea,  looks  to  her  as  an  angel  of 
help,  who  may  join  herself  to  him,  and  go  down  the 
rough  way  of  life  as  it  is,  to  strengthen  him  in  it  by 
her  sympathy,  and  gild  its  darkness,  if  dark  it  must  be, 
by  the  light  of  her  patience  and  the  constancy  of  her 
devotion.  The  main  difference  is,  that  the  romance 
comes  out  at  the  end  and  was  not  all  expended  at  the 
beginning. 

The  close  necessities  of  these  more  primitive  days 
connected  many  homely  incidents  with  marriage, 
which,  however,  rather  heighten  the  picturesque  sim 
plicity  than  disparage  the  beauty  of  its  attractions. 
The  question  of  the  outfit,  the  question  of  ways  and 
means,  the  homely  prudence  pulling  back  the  heroics 
of  faith  and  passion,  only  to  make  them  more  heroic  at 
last ;  all  these  you  will  readily  imagine. 

I  suppose  many  of  my  audience  may  have  heard  of 
the  distinguished  Christian  minister,  still  living  in  the 
embers  of  extreme  old.  age,  who  came  to  the  point,  not 
of  a  flight  in  the  winter,  but  of  marriage,  and  partly  by 
reason  of  the  Kevolution  then  in  progress,  could  find 
no  way  to  obtain  the  necessary  wedding  suit.  Where 
upon,  the  young  woman's  benevolent  mother  had  some 
of  her  sheep  sheared  and  sewed  up  in  blankets  to  keep 
them  from  perishing  with  cold,  that  the  much  required 
felicity  might  be  consummated. 

But  the  schools, — we  must  not  pass  by  these,  if  we 
88 


386  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

are  to  form  a  truthful  and  sufficient  picture  of  the 
homespun  days.  The  school-master  did  not  exactly  go 
round  the  district  to  fit  out  the  children's  minds  with 
learning,  as  the  shoemaker  often  did  to  fit  their  feet 
with  shoes,  or  the  tailors  to  measure  and  cut  for  their 
bodies ;  but,  to  come  as  near  it  as  possible,  he  boarded 
round,  (a  custom  not  yet  gone  by,)  and  the  wood  for 
the  common  fire  was  supplied  in  a  way  equally  primi 
tive,  viz.,  by  a  contribution  of  loads  from  the  several 
families,  according  to  their  several  quantities  of  child 
hood.  The  children  were  all  clothed  alike  in  home 
spun,  and  the  only  signs  of  aristocracy  were,  that  some 
were  clean  and  some  a  degree  less  so,  some  in  fine 
white  and  striped  linen,  some  in  brown  tow  crash  ;  and, 
in  particular,  as  I  remember  with  a  certain  feeling  of 
quality  I  do  not  like  to  express,  the  good  fathers  of 
some  testified  the  opinion  they  had  of  their  children,  by 
bringing  fine  round  loads  of  hickory  wood  to  warm 
them,  while  some  others,  I  regret  to  say,  brought  only 
scanty,  scraggy,  ill-looking  heaps  of  green  oak,  white 
birch,  and  hemlock.  Indeed,  about  all  the  bickerings 
of  quality  among  the  children  centered  in  the  quality 
of  the  wood-pile.  There  was  no  complaint,  in  those 
days,  of  the  want  of  ventilation ;  for  the  large  open  fire* 
place  held  a  considerable  fraction  of  a  cord  of  woodw 
and  the  windows  took  in  just  enough  air  to  supply  the 
combustion.  Besides,  the  bigger  lads  were  occasionally 
ventilated,  by  being  sent  out  to  cut  wood  enough  to 
keep  the  fire  in  action.  The  seats  were  made  of  the 
outer  slabs  from  the  saw-mill,  supported  by  slant  legs 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  887 

driven  into  and  a  proper  distance  through  augur  holes, 
and  planed  smooth  on  the  top  by  the  rather  tardy  pro 
cess  of  friction.  But  the  spelling  went  on  bravely,  and 
we  ciphered  away  again  and  again,  always  till  we  got 
through  Loss  and  Gain.  The  more  advanced  of  us, 
too,  made  light  work  of  Lindley  Murray,  and  went  on 
to  the  parsing,  finally,  of  extracts  from  Shakspeare  and 
Milton,  till  some  of  us  began  to  think  we  had  mastered 
their  tough  sentences  in  a  more  consequential  sense  of 
the  term  than  was  exactly  true.  0, 1  remember,  (about 
the  remotest  thing  I  can  remember,)  that  low  seat,  too 
high,  nevertheless,  to  allow  the  feet  to  touch  the  floor, 
and  that  friendly  teacher  who  had  the  address  to  start 
a  first  feeling  of  enthusiasm  and  awaken  the  first  sense 
of  power.  He  is  living  still,  and  whenever  I  think  of 
him,  he  rises  up  to  me  in  the  far  background  of  mem 
ory,  as  bright  as  if  he  had  worn  the  seven  stars  in  his 
hair.  (I  said  he  is  living ;  yes,  he  is  here  to-day,  God 
bless  him !)  How  many  others  of  you  that  are  here  as 
sembled,  recall  these  little  primitive  universities  of 
homespun,  where  your  mind  was  born,  with  a  similar 
feeling  of  reverence  and  homely  satisfaction.  Perhaps 
you  remember,  too,  with  a  pleasure  not  less  genuine, 
that  3^011  received  the  classic  discipline  of  the  university 
proper,  under  a  dress  of  homespun,  to  be  graduated,  at 
the  close,  in  the  joint  honors  of  broadcloth  and  the 
parchment. 

Passing  from  the  school  to  the  church,  or  rather  I 
should,  say,    to   the   meeting-house— -good   translation, 


388  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

whether  meant  or  not,  of  what  is  older  and  more  vener 
able  than  church,  viz.,  synagogue — here,  again,  you 
meet  the  picture  of  a  sturdy  homespun  worship.  Prob 
ably  it  stands  on  some  hill,  midway  between  three  or 
four  valleys,  whither  the  tribes  go  up  to  worship,  and, 
when  the  snow-drifts  are  deepest,  go  literally  from 
strength  to  strength.  There  is  no  furnace  or  stove, 
save  the  foot-stoves  that  are  filled  from  the  fires  of  the 
neighboring  houses,  and  brought  in  partly  as  a  rather 
formal  compliment  to  the  delicacy  of  the  tender  sex, 
and  sometimes  because  they  are  really  wanted.  The 
dress  of  the  assembly  is  mostly  homespun,  indicating 
only  slight  distinctions  of  quality  in  the  worshipers. 
They  are  seated  according  to  age,  the  old  king  Lemuels 
and  their  queens  in  front,  near  the  pulpit,  and  the 
younger  Lemuels  farther  back,  inclosed  in  pews,  sitting 
back  to  back,  impounded,  all,  for  deep  thought  and 
spiritual  digestion;  only  the  deacons,  sitting  close  un 
der  the  pulpit,  by  themselves,  to  receive,  as  their  dis 
tinctive  honor,  the  more  perpendicular  droppings  of 
the  word.  Clean  round  the  front  of  the  gallery  is 
drawn  a  single  row  of  choir,  headed  by  the  key-pipe,  in 
the  center.  The  pulpit  is  overhung  by  an  august 
wooden  canopy,  called  a  sounding-board — study  gen 
eral,  of  course,  and  first  lesson  of  mystery  to  the  eyes 
of  the  children,  until  what  time  their  ears  are  opened  to 
understand  the  spoken  mysteries. 

There  is  no  affectation  of  seriousness  in  the  assembly, 
no  mannerism  of  worship ;  some  would  say  too  little  of 
the  manner  of  worship.  They  think  of  nothing,  in 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  389 

fact,  save  what  meets  their  intelligence  and  enters  into 
them  by  that  method.  They  appear  like  men  who 
have  a  digestion  for  strong  meat,  and  have  no  concep 
tion  that  trifles  more  delicate  can  be  of  any  account  to 
feed  the  system.  Nothing  is  dull  that  has  the  matter 
in  it,  nothing  long  that  has  not  exhausted  the  matter. 
If  the  minister  speaks  in  his  great  coat  and  thick  gloves 
or  mittens,  if  the  howling  blasts  of  winter  drive  in 
across  the  assembly  fresh  streams  of  ventilation  that 
move  the  hair  upon  their  heads,  they  are  none  the  less 
content,  if  only  he  gives  them  good  strong  exercise. 
Under  their  hard,  and,  as  some  would  say,  stolid  faces, 
great  thoughts  are  brewing,  and  these  keep  them  warm. 
Free-will,  fixed  fate,  foreknowledge  absolute,  trinity, 
redemption,  special  grace,  eternity — give  them  any 
thing  high  enough,  and  the  tough  muscle  of  their  in 
ward  man  will  be  climbing  sturdily  into  it;  and  if  they 
go  away  having  something  to  think  of,  they  have  had 
a  good  day.  A  perceptible  glow  will  kindle  in  their 
hard  faces,  only  when  some  one  of  the  chief  apostles,  a 
Day,  a  Smith,  or  a  Bellamy,  has  come  to  lead  them  up 
some  higher  pinnacle  of  thought,  or  pile  upon  their 
sturdy  mind  some  heavier  weight  of  argument — faint 
ing  never  under  any  weight,  even  that  which,  to  the 
foreign  critics  of  the  discourses  preached  by  them  and 
others  of  their  day,  it  seems  impossible  for  any,  the 
most  cultivated  audience  in  the  world,  to  have  sup 
ported.  These  royal  men  of  homespun — how  great  a 
thing  to  them  was  religion !  The  district  school  was 
there,  the  great  Bellamy  is  here  among  the  highest 

33* 


390  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

peaks  and  solitudes  of  divine  government,  and  between 
is  close  living  and  hard  work,  but  they  are  kings  alike 
in  all ! 

True  there  was  a  rigor  in  their  piety,  a  want  of 
gentle  feeling;  their  Christian  graces  were  cast-iron 
shapes,  answering  with  a  hard  metallic  ring.  But  they 
stood  the  rough  wear  of  life  none  the  less  durably  for 
the  excessive  hardness  of  their  temperament,  kept  their 
families  and  communities  none  the  less  truly,  though 
it  may  be  less  benignly,  under  the  sense  of  God  and  re 
ligion.  If  we  find  something  to  modify  or  soften,  in 
their  over-rigid  notions  of  Christian  living,  it  is  yet 
something  to  know  that  what  we  are  they  have  made 
us,  and  that,  when  we  have  done  better  for  the  ages 
that  come  after  us,  we  shall  have  a  more  certain  right 
to  blame  their  austerities. 

View  them  as  we  may,  there  is  yet,  and  always  will 
be,  something  magnificent  in  their  stern,  practical  fidel 
ity  to  their  principles.  If  they  believed  it  to  be  more 
scriptural  and  Christian  to  begin  their  Sunday,  not 
with  the  western,  but  with  the  Jewish  and  other  east 
ern  nations,  at  the  sunset  on  Saturday,  their  practice 
did  not  part  company  with  their  principles — it  was  sun 
down  at  sundown,  not  somewhere  between  that  time 
and  the  next  morning.  Thus,  being  dispatched,  when 
a  lad,  one  Saturday  afternoon  in  the  winter,  to  bring 
home  a  few  bushels  of  apples  engaged  of  a  farmer  a 
mile  distant,  I  remember  how  the  careful,  exact  man 
looked  first  at  the  clock,  then  out  the  window  at  the 
sun,  and  turning  to  me  said,  "I  can  not  measure  out 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  391 

the  apples  in  time  for  you  to  get  home  before  sundown, 
you  must  come  again  Monday;"  then  how  I  went 
home,  venting  my  boyish  impatience  in  words  not  ex 
actly  respectful,  assisted  by  the  sunlight  playing  still 
upon  the  eastern  hills,  and  got  for  my  comfort  a  very 
unaccountably  small  amount  of  specially  silent  sympa 
thy. 

I  have  never  yet  ascertained  whether  that  refusal  was 
exactly  justified  by  the  patriarchal  authorities  appealed 
to,  or  not.  Be  that  as  it  may,  have  what  opinion  of  it 
you  will,  I  confess  to  you,  for  one,  that  I  recall  the 
honest,  faithful  days  of  homespun  represented  in  it, 
days  when  men's  lives  went  by  their  consciences,  as 
their  clocks  did  by  the  sun,  with  a  feeling  of  profound- 
est  reverence.  It  is  more  than  respectable — it  is  sub 
lime.  If  we  find  a  more  liberal  way,  and  think  we  are 
safe  in  it,  or  if  we  are  actually  so,  we  can  never  yet 
break  loose  from  a  willing  respect  to  this  inflexible, 
majestic  paternity  of  truth  and  godliness. 

Eegarding,  now,  the  homespun  age  as  represented  in 
these  pictures  of  the  social  and  religious  life,  we  need, 
in  order  to  a  full  understanding  or  conception  of  the 
powers  and  the  possibilities  of  success  embodied  in  it, 
to  go  a  step  farther;  to  descend  into  the  practical 
struggle  of  common  life,  and  see  how  the  muscle  of  en 
ergy  and  victory  is  developed,  under  its  close  necessities. 

The  sons  and  daughters  grew  up,  all,  as  you  will 
perceive,  in  the  closest  habits  of  industry.  The  keen 
jocky  way  of  whittling  out  a  living  by  small  bargains 


392  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

sharply  turned,  which  many  suppose  to  be  an  essential 
characteristic  of  the  Yankee  race,  is  yet  no  proper  in 
bred  distinction,  but  only  a  casual  result,  or  incident, 
that  pertains  to  the  transition  period  between  the  small, 
stringent  way  of  life  iri  the  previous  times  of  home- 
production,  and  the  new  age  of  trade.  In  these  olden 
times,  these  genuine  days  of  homespun,  they  supposed, 
in  their  simplicity,  that  thrift  represented  work,  and 
looked  about  seldom  for  any  more  delicate  and  sharper 
way  of  getting  on.  They  did  not  call  a  man's  property 
his  fortune,  but  they  spoke  of  one  or  another  as  being 
worth  so  much ;  conceiving  that  he  had  it  laid  up  as  the 
reward  or  fruit  of  his  deservings.  The  house  was  a 
factory  on  the  farm,  the  farm  a  grower  and  producer 
for  the  house.  The  exchanges  went  on  briskly  enough, 
but  required  neither  money  nor  trade.  No  affectation 
of  polite  living,  no  languishing  airs  of  delicacy  and  soft 
ness  in-doors,  had  begun  to  make  the  fathers  and  sons 
impatient  of  hard  work  out  of  doors,  and  set  them  at 
contriving  some  easier  and  more  plausible  way  of  liv 
ing.  Their  very  dress  represented  work,  and  they 
went  out  as  men  whom  the  wives  and  daughters  had 
dressed  for  work ;  facing  all  weather,  cold  and  hot,  wet 
and  dry,  wrestling  with  the  plow  on  the  stony -sided 
hills,  digging  out  the  rocks  by  hard  lifting  and  a  good 
many  very  practical  experiments  in  mechanics,  dressing 
the  flax,  threshing  the  rye,  dragging  home,  in  the  deep 
snows,  the  great  wood-pile  of  the  year's  consumption, 
and  then,  when  the  day  is  ended — having  no  loose 
money  to  spend  in  taverns — taking  their  recreation,  all 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  393 

together,  in  reading,  or  singing,  or  happy  talk,  or  silent 
looking  in  the  fire,  and  finally  in  sleep — to  rise  again, 
with  the  sun,  and  pray  over  the  family  Bible  for  just 
such  another  good  day  as  the  last.  And  so  they  lived, 
working  out,  each  year,  a  little  advance  of  thrift,  just 
within  the  line  of  comfort. 

The  picture  still  holds,  in  part,  though  greatly  modi 
fied  by  the  softened  manner  of  in-door  life,  and  the 
multiplied  agencies  of  emigration,  travel,  trade  and  ma 
chinery.  It  is,  on  the  whole,  a  hard  and  over-severe 
picture,  and  yet  a  picture  that  embodies  the  highest 
points  of  merit,  connects  the  noblest  results  of  character. 
Out  of  it,  in  one  view,  come  all  the  successes  we  com 
memorate  on  this  festive  occasion. 

No  mode  of  life  was  ever  more  expensive ;  it  was 
life  at  the  expense  of  labor  too  stringent  to  allow  the 
highest  culture  and  the  most  proper  enjoyment.  Even 
the  dress  of  it  was  more  expensive  than  we  shall  ever 
see  again.  Still  it  was  a  life  of  honesty  and  simple  con 
tent  and  sturdy  victory.  Immoralities,  that  rot  down 
the  vigor  and  humble  the  consciousness  of  families, 
were  as  much  less  frequent,  as  they  had  less  thought  of 
adventure,  less  to  do  with  travel  and  trade  and  money, 
and  were  closer  to  nature  and  the  simple  life  of  home. 

If  they  were  sometimes  drudged  by  their  over-intense 
labor,  still  they  were  kept  by  it  in  a  generally  rugged 
state,  both  of  body  and  mind.  They  kept  a  good  di 
gestion,  which  is  itself  no  small  part  of  a  character. 
The  mothers  spent  their  nervous  impulse  on  their  mus 
cles,  and  had  so  much  less  need  of  keeping  down  the 


394  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

excess,  or  calming  the  unspent  lightning,  by  doses  of 
anodyne.  In  the  play  of  the  wheel,  they  spun  fibre 
too  within,  and  in  the  weaving,  wove  it  close  and  firm. 
They  realized,  to  the  full,  the  poet's  picture  of  the 
maiden,  who  made  a  robust,  happy  life  of  peace,  by  the 
industry  of  her  hands. 

"  She  never  feels  the  spleen's  imagined  pains, 
Nor  melancholy  stagnates  in  her  veins ; 
She  never  loses  life  in  thoughtless  ease, 
Nor  on  the  velvet  couch  invites  disease ; 
Her  homespun  dress,  in  simple  neatness  lies, 
And  for  no  glaring  equipage  she  Sighs ; 
No  midnight  masquerade  her  beauty  wears, 
And  health,  not  paint,  the  fading  bloom  repairs." 

Be  it  true,  as  it  may,  that  the  mothers  of  the  home 
spun  age  had  a  severe  limit  on  their  culture  and  accom 
plishments.  Be  it  true  that  we  demand  a  delicacy  and 
elegance  of  manners  impossible  to  them,  under  the 
rugged  necessities  they  bore.  Still  there  is,  after  all, 
something  very  respectable  in  good  health,  and  a  great 
many  graces  play  in  its  look  that  we  love  to  study, 
even  if  there  be  a  little  show  of  toughness  in  their 
charms.  How  much  is  there,  too,  in  the  sublime 
motherhood  of  health!  Hence  come,  not  always,  I 
know,  but  oftenest,  the  heroes  and  the  great  minds 
gifted  with  volume  and  power  and  balanced  for  the 
manly  virtues  of  truth,  courage,  persistency,  and  all 
sorts  of  victory. 

It  was  also  a  great  point,  in  this  homespun  mode  of 
life,  that  it  imparted  exactly  what  many  speak  of  only 
with  contempt,  a  closely  girded  habit  of  economy. 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  395 

Harnessed,  all  together,  into  the  producing  process, 
young  and  old,  male  and  female,  from  the  boy  that 
rode  the  plow-horse,  to  the  grandmother  knitting  under 
her  spectacles,  they  had  no  conception  of  squandering 
lightly  what  they  all  had  been  at  work,  thread  by  thread, 
and  grain  by  grain,  to  produce.  They  knew  too  ex 
actly  what  every  thing  cost,  even  small  things,  not  to 
husband  them  carefully.  Men  of  patrimony  in  the 
great  world,  therefore,  noticing  their  small  way  in 
trade,  or  expenditure,  are  ready,  as  we  often  see,  to 
charge  them  with  meanness — simply  because  they 
knew  things  only  in  the  small ;  or,  what  is  not  far  dif 
ferent,  because  they  were  too  simple  and  rustic  to  have 
any  conception  of  the  big  operations  by  which  other 
men  are  wont  to  get  their  money  without  earning  it, 
and  lavish  the  more  freely  because  it  was  not  earned. 
Still  this  knowing  life  only  in  the  small,  it  will  be 
found,  is  really  any  thing  but  meanness. 

Probably  enough  the  man  who  is  heard  threshing  in 
his  barn  of  a  winter  evening,  by  the  light  of  a  lantern, 
(I  knew  such  an  example,)  will  be  seen  driving  his 
team  next  day,  the  coldest  day  of  the  year,  through  the 
deep  snow  to  a  distant  wood-lot,  to  draw  a  load  for  a 
present  to  his  minister.  So  the  housewife  that  higgles 
for  a  half  hour  with  the  merchant  over  some  small 
trade,  is  yet  one  that  will  keep  watch,  not  unlikely, 
when  the  school-master,  boarding  round  the  district, 
comes  to  some  hard  quarter,  and  commence  asking  him 
to  dinner,  then  to  tea,  then  to  stay  over  night,  and  lit 
erally  boarding  him,  till  the  hard  quarter  is  passed. 


396  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

Who  now,  in  the  great  world  of  money,  will  do,  not  to 
say  the  same,  as  much,  proportionally  as  much,  in  any 
of  the  pure  hospitalities  of  life  ? 

Besides,  what  sufficiently  disproves  any  real  mean 
ness,  it  will  be  found  that  children  brought  up,  in  this 
way,  to  know  things  in  the  small — what  they  cost  and 
what  is  their  value — have,  in  just  that  fact,  one  of  the 
best  securities  of  character  and  most  certain  elements  of 
power  and  success  in  life ;  because  they  expect  to  get 
on  by  small  advances  followed  up  and  saved  by  others, 
not  by  sudden  leaps  of  fortune  that  despise  the  slow  but 
surer  methods  of  industry  and  merit.  When  the  hard, 
wiry -looking  patriarch  of  homespun,  for  example,  sets 
off  for  Hartford,  or  Bridgeport,  to  exchange  the  little 
surplus  of  his  year's  production,  carrying  his  provision 
with  him  and  the  fodder  of  his  team,  and  taking  his 
boy  along  to  show  him  the  great  world,  you  may  laugh 
at  the  simplicity,  or  pity,  if  you  will,  the  sordid  look  of 
the  picture ;  but,  five  or  ten  years  hence,  this  boy  will 
probably  enough  be  found  in  College,  digging  out  the 
cent's  worths  of  his  father's  money  in  hard  study ;  and 
some  twenty  years  later,  he  will  be  returning,  in  his  hon 
ors,  as  the  celebrated  Judge,  or  Governor,  or  Senator  and 
public  orator,  from  some  one  of  the  great  States  of  the 
republic,  to  bless  the  sight  once  more  of  that  venerated 
pair  who  shaped  his  beginnings,  and  planted  the  small 
seeds  of  his  future  success.  Small  seeds,  you  may  have 
thought,  of  meanness ;  but  now  they  have  grown  up 
and  blossomed  into  a  large-minded  life,  a  generous  pub 
lic  devotion,  and  a  free  benevolence  to  mankind. 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  397 

And  just  here,  I  am  persuaded,  is  the  secret,  in  no 
small  degree,  of  the  very  peculiar  success  that  has  dis 
tinguished  the  sons  of  Connecticut,  and,  not  least,  those 
of  Litchfield  County,  in  their  migration  to  other  States. 
It  is  because  they  have  gone  out  in  the  wise  economy 
of  a  simple,  homespun  training,  expecting  to  get  on  in 
the  world  by  merit  and  patience,  and  by  a  careful  hus 
banding  of  small  advances ;  secured  in  their  virtue,  by 
just  that  which  makes  their  perseverance  successful. 
For  the  men  who  see  the  great  in  the  small,  and  go  on 
to  build  the  great  by  small  increments,  will  commonly 
have  an  exact  conscience  too  that  beholds  great  princi 
ples  in  small  things,  and  so  form  a  character  of  integ 
rity  before  both  God  and  man,  as  solid  and  massive  as 
the  outward  successes  they  conquer.  The  great  men 
who  think  to  be  great  in  general,  having  yet  nothing 
great  in  particular,  are  a  much  more  windy  affair. 

It  is  time  now  that  I  should  draw  my  discourse,  al 
ready  too  far  protracted,  to  a  close.  Some  of  you,  I 
suppose,  will  hardly  call  it  a  sermon.  I  only  think  it 
very  faithfully  answers  to  the  text,  or  rather  to  the 
whole  chapter  from  which  the  text  is  taken ;  and  that 
sometimes  we  get  the  purest  and  most  wholesome  les 
sons  of  Christian  fidelity,  by  going  a  little  way  back 
from  matters  of  spiritual  experience,  carrying  the  wise 
Proverbs  with  us,  to  look  on  the  prudentials  of  the 
world  of  prudence,  and  watch  the  colors  that  play  upon 
the  outer  surfaces  of  life  and  its  common  affairs. 

I  have  wished,  in  particular,  to  bring  out  an  impres- 
34 


398  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN 

sion  of  the  unrecorded  history  of  the  times  gone  by. 
We  must  not  think  on  such  an  occasion  as  this  that  the 
great  men  have  made  the  history.  Eather  is  it  the  his 
tory  that  has  made  the  men.  It  is  the  homespun  many, 
the  simple  Christian  men  and  women  of  the  century- 
gone  by,  who  bore  their  life-struggle  faithfully  in  these 
valleys  and  among  these  hills,  and  who  now  are  sleep 
ing  in  the  untitled  graves  of  Christian  worth  and  piety. 
These  are  they  whom  we  are  most  especially  to  honor, 
and  it  is  good  for  us  all  to  see  and  know,  in  their  ex 
ample,  how  nobly  fruitful  and  beneficent  that  virtue 
may  be,  which  is  too  common  to  be  distinguished,  and 
is  thought  of  only  as  the  worth  of  unhistoric  men. 
Worth  indeed  it  is,  that  worth  which,  being  common, 
is  the  substructure  and  the  prime  condition  of  a  happy, 
social  state,  and  of  all  the  honors  that  dignify  its  his 
tory — worth,  not  of  men  only,  but  quite  as  much  of 
women ;  for  you  have  seen,  at  every  turn  of  my  sub 
ject,  how  the  age  gone  by  receives  a  distinctive  char 
acter  from  the  queens  of  the  distaff  and  the  loom,  and 
their  princely  motherhood.  Let  no  woman  imagine 
that  she  is  without  consequence,  or  motive  to  excel 
lence,  because  she  is  not  conspicuous.  Oh,  it  is  the 
greatness  of  woman  that  she  is  so  much  like  the  great 
powers  of  nature,  back  of  the  noise  and  clatter  of  the 
world's  affairs,  tempering  all  things  with  her  benign 
influence  only  the  more  certainly  because  of  her  si 
lence,  greatest  in  her  beneficence  because  most  remote 
from  ambition,  most  forgetful  of  herself  and  fame;  a 
better  nature  in  the  world  that  only  waits  to  bless  it, 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  399 

and  refuses  to  be  known  save  in  the  successes  of  others, 
whom  she  makes  conspicuous;  satisfied  most,  in  the 
honors  that  come  not  to  her — that  "Her  husband  is 
known  in  the  gates,  when  he  sitteth  among  the  elders 
of  the  land." 

Assembled  here,  now,  as  we  are,  from  all  parts  of 
this  great  country,  most  of  us  strangers  heretofore  to 
each  other,  it  is  yet  our  common  joy  and  pride  that  so 
many  of  you  return  from  stations  of  honor,  which  are 
the  tokens  of  your  success,  appearing  among  us  in 
names  to  which  you  have  added  weight  and  luster 
abroad,  and  so  reflected  praise  on  the  home  of  your  na 
tivity  and  nurture.  Our  welcome  to  you  is  none  the 
less  hearty,  none  the  less  grateful  I  am  sure  to  you, 
that  we  give  not  all  the  credit  of  your  successes  to  you. 
We  distinguish  in  you  still  the  seeds  you  carried  away. 
"We  congratulate  you ;  we  honor  those  who  made  you 
what  you  are.  Or  if  we  say  that  we  honor  you,  we 
bow  our  heads  in  reverence  to  those  fathers  and  moth 
ers  less  distinguished  in  name,  it  may  be,  and  those  vir 
tues  of  common  life  and  industry  which  have  yielded 
both  us  and  you,  the  social  honors  we  rejoice  in,  on 
this  festive  occasion.  In  this  latter  sentiment  I  think 
you  will  join  me,  wishing,  if  possible,  to  escape  the  re 
membrance  of  yourselves,  and  pay  some  fit  honors  to 
the  majesty  of  worth,  in  a  parentage  ennobled  in  your 
selves  and  sanctified  by  the  silence  of  the  places  where 
they  are  resting  from  their  labors.  It  will  be  strange, 
too,  when  your  minds  are  softened  by  these  tender  re 
membrances,  if  your  thoughts  do  not  recur  instinctively, 


400  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

to  what  is  the  tenderest  of  all  sentiments,  that  which 
remembers  the  lessons  and  the  gentle  cares  of  a  faithful 
motherhood.  Then  let  this  voice  of  nature  speak,  and 
let  the  inward  testimony  of  our  hearts'  feeling  hail  the 
witness  of  the  concourse  here  assembled,  as  a  welcome 
and  sublime  fulfillment  of  the  word — "Her  children 
arise  up  and  call  her  blessed."  Or  if  we  exult,  as  we 
must,  in  reviewing  the  honors  that  have  crowned  the 
one  century  of  our  simple  history  as  a  people,  let  our 
joy  be  a  filial  sentiment,  saying  still,  in  the  triumphant 
words  that  close  our  song — "  Give  her  of  the  fruits  of 
her  hands,  and  let  her  own  works  praise  her  in  the 
gates!" 

Men  and  women  of  Litchfield  County,  such  has  been 
the  past ;  a  good  and  honorable  past !  We  give  it  over 
to  you — the  future  is  with  you.  It  must,  we  know,  be 
different,  and  it  will  be  what  you  make  it.  Be  faithful 
to  the  sacred  trust  God  is  this  day  placing  in  your 
hands. 

One  thing,  at  least,  I  hope;  that,  in  these  illustra 
tions,  I  have  made  some  just  impression  on  you  all  of 
the  dignity  of  work.  How  great  an  honor  it  is 
for  the  times  gone  by,  that  when  so  many  schemes  arc 
on  foot,  as  now,  to  raise  the  weak ;  when  the  friends  of 
the  dejected  classes  of  the  world  are  proposing  even  to 
reorganize  society  itself  for  their  benefit,  trying  to  hu 
manize  punishments,  to  kindle  hope  in  disability,  and 
nurse  depravity  into  a  condition  of  comfort — a  distinc 
tion  how  magnificent !  that  our  fathers  and  mothers  of 
the  century  past  had,  in  truth,  no  dejected  classes,  no 


THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN.  401 

disability,  only  here  and  there  a  drone  of  idleness,  or  a 
sporadic  case  of  vice  and  poverty;  excelling,  in  the 
picture  of  social  comfort  and  well-being  actually  real 
ized,  the  most  romantic  visions  of  our  new  seers. 
They  want  a  reorganization  of  society! — something 
better  than  the  Christian  gospel  and  the  Christian  fam 
ily  state ! — some  community  in  hollow-square,  to  pro 
tect  them  and  coax  them  up  into  a  life  of  respect,  and 
help  them  to  be  men  !  No,  they  did  not  even  so  much 
as  want  the  patronage  of  a  bank  of  savings,  to  encour 
age  them  and  take  the  wardship  of  their  cause.  They 
knew  how  to  make  their  money,  and  how  to  invest  it, 
and  take  care  of  it,  and  make  it  productive ;  how  to 
build,  and  plant,  and  make  sterility  fruitful,  and  con 
quer  all  the  hard  weather  of  life.  Their  producing  pro 
cess  took  every  thing  at  a  disadvantage ;  for  they  had  no 
capital,  no  machinery,  no  distribution  of  labor,  nothing 
but  wild  forest  and  rock ;  but  they  had  mettle  enough 
in  their  character  to  conquer  their  defects  of  outfit  and 
advantage.  They  sucked  honey  out  of  the  rock,  and 
oil  out  of  the  flinty  rock.  Nay,  they  even  seemed  to 
want  something  a  little  harder  than  nature  in  her  softer 
rnoods  could  yield  them.  Their  ideal  of  a  Goshen  they 
located,  not  in  the  rich  alluvion  of  some  fertile  Nile, 
but  upon  the  crest  of  the  world,  somewhere  between 
the  second  and  third  heaven  where  Providence  itself 
grows  cold,  and  there,  making  warmth  by  their  exer 
cise  and  their  prayers,  they  prepared  a  happier  state  of 
competence  and  wealth,  than  the  Goshen  of  the  sunny 
Nile  ever  saw.  Your  condition  will  hereafter  be  soft- 

34* 


402  THE    AGE    OF    HOMESPUN. 

ened,  and  your  comforts  multiplied.  Let  your  culture 
be  as  much  advanced.  But  let  no  delicate  spirit  that 
despises  work  grow  up  in  your  sons  and  daughters. 
Make  these  rocky  hills  smooth  their  faces  and  smile 
under  your  industry.  Let  no  absurd  ambition  tempt 
you  to  imitate  the  manners  of  the  great  world  of  fash 
ion,  and  rob  you  thus  of  the  respect  and  dignity  that 
pertain  to  manners  properly  your  own.  Maintain, 
above  all,  your  religious  exactness.  Think  what  is 
true,  and  then  respect  yourselves  in  living  exactly  what 
you  think.  Fear  God  and  keep  his  commandments,  as 
your  godly  fathers  and  mothers  did  before  you,  and 
found,  as  we  have  seen,  to  be  the  beginning  of  wisdom. 
As  their  graves  are  with  you,  so  be  that  faith  in  God 
which  ennobled  their  lives  and  glorified  their  death  an 
inheritance  in  you,  and  a  legacy  transmitted  by  you  to 
your  children. 


XI. 

THE  DAY  OF  ROADS  * 


"  In  the  days  of  Shamgar  the  son  of  Anath,  in  the  days  of  Jael,  the 
highways  were  unoccupied  and  the  travelers  walked  through  by-ways." 
— Judges  v.  6. 

I  HOPE  it  will  not  be  deemed  a  conceit,  if  I  occupy 
you,  to-day,  with  a  discourse  on  Eoads.  It  certainly 
will  not,  if  I  am  able  to  collect  about  the  subject  those 
illustrations  which  are  necessary  to  its  social  and  relig 
ious  import. 

The  Eoad  is  that  physical  sign,  or  symbol,  by  which 
you  will  best  understand  any  age  or  people.  If  they 
have  no  roads,  they  are  savages ;  for  the  Eoad  is  a  cre 
ation  of  man  and  a  type  of  civilized  society.  If  law  is 
weak  and  society  insecure,  you  will  see  men  perched  in 
castles,  on  the  top  of  inaccessible  rocks,  or  gathered 
into  walled  cities,  spending  all  their  strength,  not  in 
opening  Eoads,  but  in  fortifying  themselves  against  the 
access  of  danger.  The  draw-bridge  is  up,  the  portcullis 
down,  and  sentinels  are  mounted  on  the  ramparts,  care 
fully  studying  every  footman  or  horseman  that  turns 
the  corner  of  a  wood,  or  gallops  across  the  distant  plain. 

*  Delivered  at  the  North  Church,  Hartford,  on  the  Annual  Thanks 
giving,  A.  D.  1846. 


404  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

"Wheeled  vehicles  are  seldom  seen,  and  roads  are  rather 
obstructed  than  opened.  Or  if  you  inquire  after  com 
merce,  look  at  the  Eoads ;  for  Eoads  are  the  ducts  of 
trade.  If  you  wish  to  know  whether  society  is  stag 
nant,  learning  scholastic,  religion  a  dead  formality,  you 
may  learn  something  by  going  into  universities  and  li 
braries  ;  something  also  by  the  work  that  is  doing  .on 
cathedrals  and  churches,  or  in  them;  but  quite  as 
much  by  looking  at  the  Roads.  For  if  there  is  any  mo 
tion  in  society,  the  Road,  which  is  the  symbol  of  motion, 
will  indicate  the  fact.  When  there  is  activity,  or  enlarge 
ment,  or  a  liberalizing  spirit  of  any  kind,  then  there  is 
intercourse  and  travel,  and  these  require  Roads.  So  if 
there  is  any  kind  of  advancement  going  on,  if  new  ideas 
are  abroad  and  new  hopes  rising,  then  you  will  see 
it  by  the  roads  that  are  building.  Nothing  makes  an 
inroad  without  making  a  Road.  All-creative  action, 
whether  in  government,  industry,  thought,  or  religion, 
creates  Roads. 

In  the  days  of  Shamgar  and  the  Judges,  there  was  no 
law  or  security.  Every  one  did  what  was  right  in  his 
own  eyes,  that  is,  what  was  wrong  in  the  eyes  of  every 
body  else.  Gangs  of  robbers  and  marauders  prowled 
over  the  country,  stripping  every  passenger,  and  rush 
ing  into  the  gate  of  every  walled  town,  if  they  could 
find  it  open.  This  middle  age,  continuing  for  two 
hundred  years,  was  also  the  dark  age  of  Israel,  and 
was  to  that  nation  what  the  dark  ages,  so-called,  have 
been  to  Christendom.  As  there  was  no  security,  there 
was,  of  course,  no  commerce  or  trade.  The  highways, 


THE    DAY    OF    ROADS.  405 

therefore,  were  "  unoccupied."  that  is,  unused ;  the  public 
roads,  such  as  they  had,  were  blocked  up  and  made  im 
passable,  and  the  bridges  torn  down,  to  prevent  hostile 
incursions  upon  the  towns.  The  "  travelers,"  therefore, 
or  more  literally,  the  "footers,"  for  there  was  no  travel 
save  on  foot,  walked  through  by-ways  or  crooked  and 
obscure  trails — picking  out  their  way  across  mountain 
passes,  through  glens  and  over  the  fields.  "What  a  pic 
ture  of  society  have  we  here — the  whole  book  of  Judges 
in  a  sentence ! 

So  things  continued  till  the  reign  of  law  began  to  be 
established  under  Samuel  and  David.  This  latter 
finally  went  so  far  as  to  open  a  commercial  treaty  with 
Hiram  of  Tyre ;  and  as  the  object  of  the  treaty  was  to 
procure  timber  for  the  temple,  we  see  that  a  commercial 
road  was  opened  leading  down  to  Tyre.  Another  must 
have  been  constructed,  leading  off  to  Lebanon.  When 
Solomon  came  to  the  throne,  a  new  age  was  dawning. 
He  was,  moreover,  a  liberal  and  cultivated  man  himself, 
acquainted  with  all  the  foreign  courts  about  him,  and 
he  went  into  relations  of  active  intercourse  with  them. 
He  opened  a  lively  and  lucrative  commerce  with  the 
East,  with  Egypt  and  the  Red  Sea,  and  sent  out  his 
ships  of  commerce  even  to  Spain.  He  had  also  four 
teen  hundred  chariots  of  war,  which  are  also  an  indica 
tion  that  he  had  Roads  leading  in  every  direction.  I 
do  not  say  that  this  was  an  age  of  the  highest  civiliza 
tion,  or  the  greatest  public  happiness.  Some  mournful 
consequences  were  to  be  produced  by  this  very  activity 
of  intercourse  and  travel.  Still  it  was  the  splendid  age 


•i06  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

of  Israel — the  age  of  new  hope,  excitement,  wealth  and 
power.  Therefore  it  was  the  age  of  Roads ;  and  Roads 
were  the  type  of  the  age ;  travel  the  spring  of  its  activ 
ity.  Now  it  was  that  philosophy  and  learning  of  every 
kind  most  flourished,  now  that  architecture  began  to  be 
cultivated,  now  that  religion  displayed  the  greatest  zeal 
for  expense,  built  its  chief  monument,  and  enacted  its 
most  public  and  gorgeous  solemnities. 

Could  we  restore  the  lost  history  of  Egypt,  we  should 
find  that  the  splendid  age  of  that  buried  realm  of  splen 
dor  and  power,  the  age  of  the  pyramids,  was  an  age  of 
Roads.  The  hundred  gates,  too,  of  Thebes  would  be 
seen  pouring  out  their  vehicles  of  commerce  and  travel, 
and  their  chariots  of  war  rolling  up  the  dust  of  the 
plain,  till  they  are  lost  in  the  smoky  horizon  on  every 
side.  Now,  Egypt  is  more  like  Israel  in  the  days  of 
Shamgar. 

The  splendid  age  of  the  Roman  empire  is  known  to 
have  been  an  age  of  Roads.  The  Appian  Way,  lead 
ing  off  to  Brundusium,  on  the  southeastern  coast  of 
the  peninsula,  about  four  hundred  miles,  paved  with 
hexagonal  blocks  of  stone  laid  in  cement,  was  not  the 
only  one.  This  was  built  three  hundred  years  before 
Christ.  As  the  empire  grew  in  power  and  splendor, 
Roads  multiplied ;  till,  in  the  age  of  the  Antonines,  one 
might  stand  in  the  forum  between  highways  coming  in 
from  the  north  and  the  south,  the  east  and  the  west, 
and  see  travel  pouring  in  from  Scotland  on  one  side, 
and  Antioch  on  the  other.  Mountains  were  perforated, 
rivers  bridged,  milestones  set  up,  and  the  roads  them- 


THE    DAY    OF    ROADS.  407 

selves  were  hardened  to  a  floor,  macadamized  before 
the  time  of  McAdarn,  by  sand,  gravel  and  cement. 
All  the  distant  provinces  and  cities  were  united,  in  this 
manner,  and  regular  posts  established.  Beginning  at 
Scotland,  the  Roman  could  travel  on  by  post  to  Anti- 
och,  a  distance  of  nearly  four  thousand  miles,  inter 
rupted  only  by  the  passage  of  the  English  Channel  and 
the  Hellespont,  And  it  is  actually  related,  as  one  of 
the  memorabilia  of  the  age,  that  one  Csesarius  went 
post  from  Antioch  to  Constantinople,  six  hundred  and 
sixty-five  miles,  in  less  than  six  days.  But  the  power 
of  Rome  was  in  its  arms,  and  these  Roads  were  built 
rather  as  the  bonds  of  conquest  and  means  of  military 
subjection,  than  for  the  benefit  of  industry  or  the  social 
advancement  of  the  empire.  Still  they  represent  activ 
ity.  When  these  Roads  are  building,  something  is  go 
ing  on — it  is  no  stagnant  age.  It  is  also  to  be  re 
marked,  that  while  the  Roads  consolidated  the  empire, 
they  also  assisted  the  civilization  and  conversion  of  the 
nations  through  which  they  passed.  Christianity  went 
forth  on  the  Roads,  as  a  traveler  and  a  soldier,  to  con 
solidate  her  empire. 

Again,  it  is  known  that  the  crusades  gave  birth  to 
modern  commerce,  and  that  commerce  gave  that  spring 
to  wealth  and  refinement  which  erected  the  cathedrals 
of  Flanders,  Germany,  France  and  England.  The  ca 
thedral  age  was  an  age  of  Roads  and  of  travel.  And  it 
would  be  well  if  those  who  boast  the  glory  and  relig 
ious  grandeur  of  this  wonderful  age,  contrasting  it  with 
our  shallow  age.  of  speed  and  trade  and  travel,  would 


408  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

remember  that  Eoads  built  the  cathedrals.  Possibly 
we  may  have  something  to  build,  quite  as  admirable  as 
these,  though  something  certainly  a  little  different  from 
these. 

For,  now,  it  is  clear  enough  that  a  new  age  of  Eoads 
has  come,  and  the  world  is  waking  up  to  do  something. 
The  days  of  Shamgar  the  son  of  Anath  are  ended,  and 
the  people  of  the  walled  towns  and  castles  are  coming 
out  to  build  Roads.  They  build  not  merely  Roads  of 
earth  and  stone,  as  of  old,  but  they  build  iron  Roads. 
And  not  content  with  horses  of  flesh,  they  are  building 
horses  also  of  iron,  such  as  never  faint  or  lose  their 
breath,  and  go,  withal,  somewhat  faster  even  than  the 
Roman  post — not  to  speak  of  the  immense  loads  they 
whirl  over  mountains  and  through  them,  from  mart  to 
mart  and  from  one  shore  to  another.  We  have  in 
vented,  too,  another  kind  of  sail,  which  runs  against 
the  wind  or  away  from  it,  stemming  tides  and  climbing 
currents,  making  Roads  through  oceans,  and  changing 
the  great  inland  sluices  of  the  world  into  paths  of  com 
merce  and  travel.  And  where  we  can  not  go  bodily  to 
speak  ourselves,  we  send  out  newspapers  as  the  posts 
of  thought,  setting  every  man  to  talking  with  every 
other,  so  that  all  which  the  great  good  men  are  doing 
and  planning  is  known  to  every  body,  and  all  that  op 
pressors  and  knaves  do,  or  would  do,  is  exposed,  exe 
crated,  and  if  any  shame  is  left,  shamed  out  of  the 
world.  ISTor  is  this  all ;  we  have  produced  still  another 
new  kind  of  Road,  which  outstrips  all  the  horses, 
whether  of  flesh  or  of  iron — a  Road  for  Thought; 


THE    DAY    OF    ROADS.  409 

which  when  we  get  complete,  the  world  will  become  a 
vast  sensorium,  spinning  out  its  nerves  of  cognition 
and  feeling,  and  keeping  the  whole  body  apprised,  in 
every  limb  and  member,  of  what  the  electric  organ 
meditates.  Whatever  else  we  may  think,  or  hope,  or 
fear,  it  is  quite  certain  that  this  is  an  age  o£  Koads.  If 
the  Shamgars  of  conservatism,  looking  through  the  loop 
holes  of  their  walled  towns  and  seeing  so  many  people 
out  whirling  through  the  air,  are  frightened  by  the 
sight,  fearing  lest  all  the  walls  of  stability  and  defense 
are  going  to  break  way,  still  the  Eoads  will  be  built 
and  the  motion  will  go  on.  Wise  or  unwise,  the  world 
has  taken  it  into  its  head  to  have  Eoads  and  there  is  a 
destiny  in  it,  against  which  remonstrance  is  unavailable. 
Indeed,  they  need  not  go  to  their  battlements  or  loop 
holes  to  see  it;  for  this  destiny,  good  or  bad,  has  al 
ready  broken  through  their  walls.  Many  a  time, 
within  the  last  year,  have  I  seen  the  Eailroad  forcing 
the  parapets  and  buttresses  of  walled  cities  and  sending 
in  the  iron  horse  of  travel,  in  thunder  and  smoke,  to  its 
very  center.  I  never  knew  so  well  before  what  that 
word  destiny  means ;  for  here  I  have  seen  the  new  age 
breaking  through  the  old ;  power  reversing  all  its  in 
tents  ;  and  human  society,  by  some  fiat  of  God,  com 
pelled  to  unwrap  the  coil  of  its  jealousies  and  fears,  to 
seek,  as  a  good,  what  it  repelled  as  an  evil ;  and  the 
children  moved  to  cast  away,  for  their  life's  sake,  what 
their  fathers  erected  to  save  their  bodies. 

Acknowledging,  then,  that  there  is  some  destiny  at 
work  in  this  matter  of  Eoads  and  of  travel,  let  us  study 

35 


410  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

into  it,  a  little,  and  see  if  we  can  gather  what  it  means. 
It  is  not,  as  all  history  informs  us,  a  social  accident,  a 
something  existing  by  itself.  It  has  its  causes  and  will 
have  its  consequences.  It  is  the  indication  of  some 
thing  existing,  and  of  something  to  come.  Some  will 
say  that  it  indicates  a  mechanical  age ;  an  age  of  utility, 
destitute  of  great  sentiments,  without  genius,  or  faith, 
or  reverence  to  the  past,  hurrying  on  to  a  sordid,  mea 
ger  end,  in  moral  and  political  anarchy,  and  atheistic 
barbarism.  Doubtless  we  are  making  abundance  of 
cheap  cotton  cloth  and  democracy,  they  will  say,  but 
where  is  that  sense  of  authority  and  fine  courtesy, 
which  prevailed  in  the  days  of  chivalry  ?  where,  above 
all,  that  sublime  reverence  for  religion,  that  genius  con 
secrated  to  religion,  which  casts  its  shadow  on  our  de 
generate  heads,  in  the  noble  structures  of  the  middle 
age?  Now  the  truth  is,  that  these  worshipers  of  au 
thority,  these  gothic-mad  moderns,  who  see  nothing 
preparing,  in  our  times,  but  money  and  democracy, 
would  themselves  have  resisted  all  which  gave  birth  to 
the  very  monuments  they  worship ;  for,  as  I  have  al 
ready  intimated,  it  was  a  Eoad-making  age  that  built 
them — an  age  of  revived  activity  and  commerce.  And 
the  very  struggle  of  that  day  was  to  get  the  Eoads ;  for 
it  was  the  want  of  Roads  that  constituted  the  chief  ob 
stacle  to  commerce  and  delayed,  so  long,  its  appearance 
among  the  European  nations.  They  knew  no  other 
state  than  a  state  of  seclusion.  Commerce  was  even  a 
thing  not  yet  conceived.  Even  the  kings  of  England 
had  their  garments  made  by  women  on  their  farms. 


THE    DAY    OF    ROADS.  411 

And  when  ascertain  ambassador,  at  the  court  of  Otho, 
boasted  that  the  Lombard  people  had  as  fine  clothes  as 
the  Greeks,  and  it  was  ascertained  that  the  Lombards 
actually  got  them  from  their  markets,  through  Venice 
and  Amalfi,  they  were  greatly  exasperated  that  foreign 
ers  should  presume  to  buy  their  clothes !  So  little  con 
ception  had  they  of  trade,  that  purchase  was  an  affront 
and  sale  a  treason !  At  length,  the  nations  began  to 
taste  the  benefits  to  be  gained  by  commerce.  But  it 
was,  at  first,  a  stolen  taste,  and  was  gotten  only  by  ex 
treme  hazard.  In  England  and  Germany,  for  example, 
the  nobles  sallied  out  of  their  castles  to  rob  every  trav 
eler  and  merchant  who  would  cross  their  domain. 
These  seats  of  chivalry  were  maintained  by  robbery, 
and  it  was  impossible  to  transport  merchandise,  even 
for  short  distances,  in  safety.  The  Hanseatic  League, 
comprising  the  four  commercial  cities  of  Germany,  was 
organized  for  the  very  purpose  of  securing  the  mer 
chants  against  these  land  pirates,  and  putting  an  end  to 
the  days  of  Shamgar.  Although  trade  began  to  get  a 
footing  in  England,  and  this  kind  of  robbery  ceased, 
still  every  noble  barbarian  who  had  a  castle,  being  the 
owner  of  the  Road  on  his  domain,  carried  on  a  robbery 
in  the  shape  of  tolls,  at  his  borders,  his  bridges  and  his 
market,  which  was  nearly  as  bad  as  the  more  violent 
method.  To  secure  an  open  Road,  therefore,  was  still 
the  problem  of  the  age,  and  one  of  the  first  laws  passed 
by  the  Parliament  was  a  law  to  excuse  the  merchant 
from  going  out  of  his  Y/ay  to  pay  toll,  when  he  could 
cross,  at  a  ford,  or  in  some  nearer  way,  to  better  advan- 


412  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

tage.  At  length,  tlie  Roads  were  opened,  trade  flowed 
in,  wealth  increased,  the  public  mind  was  liberalized, 
and  a  spirit  of  taste  and  refinement  grew  up.  And 
then,  at  last,  the  great  cathedrals  began  to  lift  their  tur 
rets  unto  the  sky.  Meantime,  how  many  of  the  fine 
conservatives  of  that  age,  do  you  suppose,  were  lament 
ing  over  it  as  a  degenerate,  mercenary  age,  an  age  of 
merchandise  and  money,  raising  up  a  class  of  upstarts 
to  rival  the  fine  old  nobility  and  destroy  ancient  pre 
cedence.  Besides,  it  was  setting  a  strong  current  to 
ward  democracy,  which  was  even  worse.  For,  not 
only  was  Yenice,  at  length,  forbidden  by  the  Holy  See 
to  kidnap  Christian  people  and  sell  them  as  slaves  to 
the  Saracens,  in  which  her  trade  begun ;  not  only  did 
the  Irish  council  determine  to  import  no  more  English 
children,  as  slaves,  which  had  been  a  regular  trade  be 
fore,  but  the  serf  on  every  estate  began  to  be  looked 
upon  as  a  man,  labor  rose  to  higher  price  than  it  com 
mands  even  now,  and  sentiments  began  to  work  in  the 
heart  of  the  English  nation,  which  did  not  stay  their 
action,  till  every  trace  of  serfdom  was  done  away. 
ISTow  in  this  former  age  of  Roads,  (for  I  know  not  how 
to  describe  it  by  any  better  epithet,)  there  is  some  look 
ing  towards  utility  certainly,  and  also  toward  democ 
racy  ;  and  yet  even  a  better  result  than  the  cathedrals 
grew  out  of  it,  viz.,  an  elevation  of  character  and  virtue 
— a  religious  elevation.  There  was  more  manhood,  as 
there  was  more  humanity;  more  piety,  as  there  was 
less  robbery ;  barbarism  drew  back,  as  comfort,  wealth 
and  virtue  multiplied;  genius  came  forth  to  make  a 


THE    DAY    OF    ROADS.  413 

thank-offering  for  its  freedom,  shot  up  its  holy  grati 
tude  into  vaulted  aisles  and  sky -piercing  pinnacles,  and 
left  the  cathedrals  standing  as  so  many  monuments  of 
thanksgiving  for  Koads ! 

An  age  of  Koads,  then,  is  not,  of  course,  an  age  of 
moral  decay  and  dissipation,  even  though  it  has  some 
looking  towards  utility  and  equality.  Possibly  it  may 
not  always  end  in  gothic  architecture,  possibly  there 
may  be  other  kinds  of  good,  in  the  universe,  beside 
gothic  architecture.  Pardon  me,  if  I  suggest  the  possi 
bility,  that  God  may  have  something  better  and  nobler 
than  this  in  store  for  the  coming  ages ;  for  though  some 
persons,  gifted  with  a  dull  imagination,  are  ever  assum 
ing  that  facts  are  the  measure  of  God's  possibilities,  and 
that  no  good  is  to  be  hoped  for,  save  the  good  that  has 
been,  it  is  yet  remarkable  that  new  kinds  of  good  do 
appear  in  human  history,  and  there  may  be  some  yet  lo 
appear,  which  have  not  been. 

I  think,  too,  that  we  can  detect  several  new  elements 
at  work,  in  our  age  of  Koads,  which  are  not  altogether 
evil,  or  destitute  of  promise.  Travel  and  motion  of 
every  kind  are  signs  of  life,  and  life  implies  the  quick 
ening  presence  of  new  ideas ;  for  a  dead  body  can  as 
easily  support  a  motion,  as  a  dead  idea.  I  shall  be  able 
too,  I  think,  to  show  you,  in  a  brief  review,  that,  with 
all  other  kinds  of  travel  in  this  age,  new  ideas  are  com 
ing  into  action  and  traveling  also.  Physical  improve 
ment  associates  moral,  and  moral  stimulates  physical. 
There  is  a  reciprocal  action  between  commerce  and 
thought,  thought  and  society,  society  and  religion. 

35* 


414  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

Improved  Roads  connect  beneficent  inroads,  and  the 
subjugation  of  matter  associates  the  subjugation  of  so 
cial  and  political  evil.  Accordingly,  new  ideas,  such 
as  these  which  follow,  are  waking  into  life  and  pressing 
their  way  into  the  heart  of  the  world — peace  between 
nations  and  a  reciprocal  interest;  religious  and  civil 
liberty;  man  as  man,  to  be  protected,  educated,  ele 
vated  by  equal  laws ;  Christian  light,  unity  and  benefi 
cence. 

An  American  sets  off  to  travel,  a  few  months,  in 
Europe,  and  see  what  can  be  seen  with  his  eyes.  His 
impressions  will  of  course  be  superficial  and,  in  many 
respects,  erroneous.  He  lands,  we  will  suppose,  in 
England.  The  first  thing  he  discovers  is,  that  England 
is  a  land  of  Roads,  new  Roads,  and  that  every  body 
there,  as  here,  is  in  motion.  The  whole  map  of  the 
island  is  covered  with  a  fine  net-work  of  rails  and  mac 
adamized  Roads,  and  yet  Road-making  is  but  just  be 
gun.  And,  among  all  the  English  whirling  over  these 
Roads,  he  meets,  every  few  hours,  one  of  his  own  coun 
trymen,  till  he  begins  to  think  that  his  countrymen  are 
waging  a  crusade  of  travel.  In  the  mail-coaches  he 
travels  ten  or  eleven  miles  an  hour  and  upon  the  rail 
road  from  thirty  to  sixty.  He  goes  into  Scotland,  he 
pierces  the  Highlands ;  and  here  he  hears  the  rolling  of 
the  engine;  sweeps  through  the  lakes  in  steamboats; 
skirts  along  their  shores,  round  the  peaks  and  crags  and 
across  the  glens,  where  Rob  Roy  and  the  Campbells 
whistled  their  clansmen,  on  a  broad,  smooth,  macadam 
ized  Road.  He  remembers  that  he  is  in  the  old  world 


THE    DAY    OF    KOADS.  415 

and  he  looks  about  for  something  old.  Occasionally  he 
sees  a  ruined  abbey,  or  castle,  or  enters,  some  ancient 
cathedral.  But  he  is  surprised  to  find  so  general  an  as 
pect  of  newness,  in  the  objects  he  sees.  Even  old 
Chester,  sufficiently  marked  by  its  antique  air,  is  most 
irreverently  disturbed  by  two  or  three  railroads  dig 
ging  into  the  walls  and  through  the  town.  London 
shows,  indeed,  a  little  patch  or  two  of  the  old  city  wall, 
as  a  curiosity,  but,  on  the  whole,  it  has  the  air  of  a  fresh 
modern  city.  An  immense  work  of  creation  is  going 
on  everywhere,  and  a  young  England  is  rising  out  of 
the  old,  fall  of  power,  and  visibly  stimulated  by  new 
thoughts.  In  the  diplomatic  quarrel  that  is  going  on 
with  his  country,  about  Oregon,  he  is  compelled  to  ob 
serve  the  dignified  aud  healthful  desire  of  peace  that 
sways  the  mind  of  the  British  people.  England  is 
doubtless  under  bonds,  in  her  debt  and  the  immense 
wealth  at  stake  in  her  commerce,  to  keep  the  peace. 
But  a  very  strong  Christian  feeling  against  war  is  also 
gaining  strength  every  year.  That  insolent  prejudice 
against  other  nations,  which  is  the  disagreeable  distinc 
tion  of  Englishmen,  and  rises,  in  part,  from  their  insu 
lar  state,  is  yielding,  at  length,  to  the  possibility  that 
there  may  be  something  right  and  respectable  out  of 
England.  The  common  people  are  moving ;  some  of 
them  have  been  as  far  as  to  London,  and  many  others 
have  been  out  of  the  town  in  which  they  were  born, 
and  returned  with  enlarged  ideas.  And  the  fact  that 
so  many  Roads  are  prepared  for  their  accommodation 
suggests,  to  many,  that  they  are  worth  being  accommo- 


416  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

dated.  In  the  corn-law  struggle,  the  landed  aristocracy, 
it  is  well  understood,  lost  the  last  hope  of  supremacy 
and  suffered  a  conclusive  defeat.  It  is  well  understood, 
also,  that  an  abatement  of  the  laws  of  primogeniture 
and  entail  must  ultimately  follow,  and  then,  as  a  conse 
quence,  a  new  distribution  of  property,  which  is  the 
greatest  social  want  of  the  English  nation.  Meantime, 
the  same  spirit  of  humanity,  which  overthrew  slavery, 
is  searching  after  some  plan  of  common  education  for 
the  people.  The  barbarous  rigors  of  penal  law  are  dis 
appearing.  Commissioners  are  raised,  every  year,  to 
inquire  into  the  miseries  of  the  laboring  classes  and 
laws  are  passed  to  improve  their  comfort.  The  moun 
tain  loads  of  scorn  and  oppression,  which  have  so  long 
lain  upon  them,  are  beginning  to  heave.  A  more  en 
larged,  indeed,  I  may  say,  a  truly  enlarged  humanity 
and  fellow-feeling  actuates  public  men,  in  the  high 
offices  of  state.  In  the  great  debate  on  the  corn-law 
question,  it  was  a  kind  of  triumph,  to  an  American,  to 
observe  that  every  speaker  felt  it  necessary  to  be  on  the 
popular  side,  and  that  every  thing  was  made,  by  the 
opposing  parties,  to  hang  on  showing  what  was  the  in 
terest  of  the  people,  the  laboring  people.  Eeligion  is  a 
greater  subject  and  closer  to  the  English  mind  than  it 
has  been  for  centuries.  Old  ideas  are  returning  as  new, 
and  new  ideas  are  starting  into  life  to  assault  and  stran 
gle  the  old.  On  one  side,  the  establishment  is  yielding 
to  apostasy.  On  the  other,  its  existence,  as  an  estab 
lishment,  is  assaulted  by  a  force,  which  is  daily  gather 
ing  vigor  and  assuming  a  more  condensed  form  of 


THE    DAY    OF    ROADS.  417 

action.  The  clergy  perceive  that  a  change  must  sooner 
or  later  come.  The  government  is  inquiring,  mean 
time,  whether  it  may  not  possibly  strengthen  the  estab 
lishment,  by  establishing  also  the  Catholic  Church  of 
Ireland  ?  but  fears  to  offend  the  known  bigotry  of  its ; 
two  established  religions,  by  the  equal  recognition  of  a 
third.  Some  of  the  more  judicious  and  pure-minded, 
in  the  Anglican  establishment,  are  beginning  to  quest 
ion  whether  its  spiritual  good  would  not  be  promoted, 
if  it  were  separated  from  the  state  and  from  all  connec 
tion  with  state  patronage.  Others  are  the  more  exas 
perated,  the  more  they  see  of  danger,  and  spare  no  act 
of  insult  or  oppression  against  the  dissenters,  that  will 
sufficiently  vent  the  disturbance  they  feel.  Every 
month  repeats  some  instance  of  the  kind  and  that  adds 
fuel  to  the  fire  already  kindled.  The  English  mind 
moves  slowly,  but  the  issue,  though  distant,  is  not 
doubtful.  The  new  age  must  come.  The  law  of  truth, 
of  equal  right,  and,  above  all,  of  Christian  purity,  must 
prevail.  Or,  if  it  be  a  question,  as  some  will  say,  be 
tween  Eoads  and  Cathedrals,  which,  in  one  sense,  it 
certainly  is,  what  chance  have  the  dead  against  the  liv 


ing? 


Arming  himself  now,  with  road-books,  a  convenience 
unknown  to  Herodotus  in  his  Egyptian  travels,  and 
another  evidence  or  indication  of  our  Eoad-making 
habit — providing  himself  with  these,  which  facilitate  all 
the  purposes  of  travel,  as  much  as  the  Eoads  do  travel 
itself;  conducting  him  to  comfort,  and  opening  all  the 
gates  of  knowledge  before  him,  so  that  he  may  pass 


418  THE    DAY    OF    KOADS. 

directly  to  that,  which,  coming  as  a  stranger,  it  would 
take  weeks  or  years  to  discover — the  traveler  sets  off 
for  the  continent.  He  lands,  we  will  say,  in  Belgium — 
at  the  terminus  of  a  Eailroad,  of  course.  He  sees  on 
the  engine,  quite  likely,  a  name  which  indicates  Amer 
ican  manufacture,  and,  in  company  with  this  and  other 
Americans,  for  they  are  everywhere,  he  commences  his 
journey  towards  the  Rhine.  Belgium  is  the  ancient 
Flanders,  the  mother  of  English  manufactures  and  com 
merce,  and  the  cock-pit,  in  all  ages,  of  the  European 
armies.  The  old  towns  throw  up  their  cathedrals,  at 
short  distances,  studding  the  sky,  monuments  all  of  an 
cient  commerce ;  a  commerce  which  the  Roads,  sweep 
ing  by,  have  come,  if  possible,  to  resuscitate — not  with 
out  some  slight  signs  of  effect.  These  Roads,  too, 
plough  their  way  across  the  old  battle-grounds,  memo 
rable  in  history — peace  rushing  over  the  fields  of  war, 
with  a  glory  as  much  brighter  as  her  victories  are  no 
bler.  One  monument  towers  above  the  plain  where 
Napoleon  bowed,  at  last,  to  the  fortune  of  arms;  a 
mound  of  earth  two  hundred  feet  or  more  in  height, 
surmounted  not  by  the  British  but  the  Belgic  lion, 
boasting  no  victory,  but  standing  to  commemorate,  in 
silence,  the  birth-time  of  peace.  New  ideas  are  at  work 
in  Belgium.  The  priests  are  jealous  of  commerce  and 
commerce  growls  at  the  priests.  The  king,  I  believe, 
does  what  he  can  for  his  people,  and  the  Roads  do 
more.  Free  sentiments  are  springing  up  and  signs  of 
quickening  are  visible,  though  the  country  is  over- 
populated  and  the  masses  are  greatly  depressed  by 


THE    DAY    OF    ROADS.  419 

superstition.  When  the  traveler  enters  the  great  ca 
thedral,  at  Ghent,  and  looks  upon  the  elegant  carved 
group  which  supports  the  pulpit — Truth  holding  her 
open  volume  to  the  dazzled  eyes  of  Time,  inscribed — 
"Awake  thou  that  sleepest  and  arise  from  the  dead  and 
Christ  shall  give  thee  light " — he  thinks  of  the  present 
degenerate  Belgic  race,  before  whom  truth  has  shut  her 
volume  and  the  light  of  Christ  is  hid,  not  without  hope 
that  they  will  sometime  find  a  prophecy,  in  what  their 
fathers  left  them.  At  all  events,  the  Eoads  are  coming, 
and,  without  doubt,  are  bringing  something  of  conse 
quence  with  them — what  that  something  will  be,  time 
will  show. 

We  come  upon  the  Ehine,  at  Cologne,  which  is  the 
Koine  of  the  North.  This  old  city,  which,  thirty  years 
ago,  was  crumbling  under  a  doom  of  decay,  is  now  re 
viving,  as  are  most  of  the  old  cities  of  Germany,  and 
showing  signs  of  creative  action.  The  mind  of  Ger 
many,  so  long  active  within  itself  and  in  the  universi 
ties,  has  caught  the  spirit  of  the  age  and  is  turning  to 
relieve  itself  in  works  of  physical  improvement, — build 
ing  Eoads,  of  course — sixty  thousand  men  at  work 
building  Eoads — from  Cologne  in  the  westy  to  Berlin  in 
the  east ;  from  Hamburg  and  Bremen  in  the  north,  to 
Vienna  in  the  south ;  also  to  Frankfort,  Dresden,  Mu 
nich,  and  I  know  not  where  beside.  In  a  few  years, 
probably  less  than  five,  the  steam-car  will  rush  from 
the  English  Channel,  through  Austria,  to  Trieste ;  and, 
in  less  than  fifty,  to  St.  Petersburg  and  thence  onward, 
through  Tartary,  to  China  and  the  Eastern  Ocean ;  by 


420  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

which,  time,  another  will  have  crossed  the  Kocky  Moun 
tains  to  Oregon,  opening  a  line  of  travel,  by  which  the 
complete  circuit  of  the  globe  may  be  made,  in  less  than 
two  months.  The  Black  Sea  will  soon  be  connected 
with  the  Baltic,  through  Moscow  and  St.  Petersburg; 
and  the  work  that  is  begun  will  not  stop  till  the  vast 
plains  of  Russia  are  spanned  throughout  with  rails  of 
iron,  and  the  whole  empire  rings  under  the  rushing 
wheels  of  travel — rings,  of  course,  with  new  ideas 
equally  stirring  and  powerful.  But  we  return  to  Ger: 
many.  The  spirit  of  thought  and  inquiry,  which  per 
vades  the  Protestant  half  of  Prussia,  is  already  break 
ing  into  the  cities  and  universities  of  the  Catholic  por 
tion,  and  thousands  released  from  the  superstitions  of 
Borne,  are  withdrawing  also  from  their  allegiance.  A 
still  more  rapid  intercourse,  produced  by  new  facilities 
of  travel,  such  as  will  bring  all  parts  of  the  kingdom 
into  sensible  contact  with  each  other,  will  either  require 
a  thorough  reformation  of  the  German  Catholic  church, 
or  determine  its  extinction.  Meantime,  the  govern 
ment,  as  honest  and  well-meaning,  probably,  as  any  in 
the  world,  though  ITU  accustomed  to  the  modern  popular 
ideas  of  liberty,  is  proving  its  beneficence  by  a  bold  at 
tempt  to  educate  the  people.  Power  is  thus  accumula 
ting  in  them,  and,  as  intelligence  increases,  so  also  does 
the  free  spirit.  A  constitutional  form  of  government 
must  follow,  in  which  the  popular  will  shall,  in  some 
way,  limit  the  throne.  Engaged  in  political  struggles 
and  duties  on  one  side,  and  in  physical  improvement 
on  the  other,  the  German  mind  will  cease,  at  length,  to 


THE    DAY    OF    EOADS.  421 

ferment  in  theories  and  become  practical.  Having 
emptied  all  the  stores  of  learning,  and  tried  all  forms 
of  thought,  and  uttered  all  the  dreams  and  visions  of 
which  souls  are  capable;  in  a  word,  having  opened 
Koads  into  every  corner  of  the  kingdoms,  both  of  truth 
and  of  error,  it  will  begin  to  settle  on  some  practical 
results,  worthy  of  the  magnificent  preparations  it  has 
made.  German  theology  is  a  great  terror  to  many,  and 
it  has  certainly  made  strange  havoc  with  the  scriptures 
and  with  all  received  opinions.  But  I  think  I  detect  a 
law  in  its  eccentricities,  by  which  it  is  seen,  in  them  all, 
to  be  moving  towards  a  certain  final  result — a  result,  in 
which  Christ  and  the  Christian  Church  have  an  interest 
as  much  greater  than  they  had  in  the  cathedrals  of  the 
former  age,  as  truth  is  more  divine  than  stone,  and  her 
temple  more  magnificent  than'  any  that  is  made  with 
hands.  Certain  it  is,  that,  if  any  thing  can  provide  a 
menstruum  which  is  able  to  dissolve  the  about  equal 
bigotry  of  Protestantism  and  Romanism,  and  bring 
them  out  into  the  open  field  of  truth,  to  search  after 
truth  in  its  own  evidence,  and  flow  together,  at  last, 
into  the  unity  of  the  truth,  it  is  this  German  activity. 
Having  done  this,  and  nothing  more,  it  will  have  ac 
complished  a  good,  sufficiently  magnificent,  to  compen 
sate  for  all  its  aberrations ;  for,  without  this,  somehow 
accomplished,  it  is  manifest  that  the  Christian  Church 
can  never  make  the  attainment,  or  achieve  the  destiny 
for  which  she  hopes. 

Returning  from  this  wide  excursion,  our  traveler  as- 
scends  the  Rhine — by  steam,  of  course;  for  the  steam- 

36 


422  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

boats  are  plying  on  this  rapid  stream,  almost  as  indus 
triously  as  on  the  Hudson.  Every  bend  of  the  river 
opens  a  vista  of  deserted  and  ruined  castles,  crowning 
the  summits  of  the  mountains  and  the  isolated  peaks 
that  overhang  the  river.  The  poetaster  sighs  over  the 
decay  of  so  much  chivalry  and  grandeur,  but  the  man 
of  sense,  knowing  that  these  were  all  so  many  abodes 
of  land  pirates  and  toll-gatherers,  who  subsisted  on  the 
prey  of  commerce,  thanks  God  that  finally  a  Road  is 
opened  for  honest  men  to  pass  and  do  the  honest  busi 
ness  of  their  life.  The  grey  old  castles,  crumbling  un 
der  a  curse,  have  a  harmless,  stupid  look,  over  which 
Time  grins  in  mockery — he  laughs  himself  at  the  sorry 
figure  they  make.  Or,  if  some  of  them  were  built  for 
purposes  of  personal  security,  in  a  lawless  and  violent 
age,  regarding  them  only  with  reverential  pity,  as  mon 
uments  of  the  days  of  Shamgar,  he  glories  not  in  them, 
but  in  the  new  age  of  law  which  has  at  length  de 
scended  on  the  world;  knowing  that  law  is  now  the 
grand  castle  of  man,  a  castle  as  much  more  magnificent, 
as  it  is  more  comprehensive ;  as  much  firmer  and  no 
bler,  as  justice  and  truth  are  more  unassailable  and  of  a 
nature  more  august  than  walls  of  stone. 

Our  traveler  breaks  into  Switzerland  through  the 
city  wall  of  Basle,  under  the  smoke  of  a  locomotive ; 
for  what  else  can  open  a  path  through  the  walls  of  for 
tified  cities?  Here,  in  Switzerland,  he  finds  also  new 
Roads,  the  best  that  can  be  made,  but  leaves  Railroads, 
for  the  present,  behind  him.  All  the  world  are  travel 
ing  in  Switzerland,  except  the  Swiss,  and  they  are 


THE    DAY    OF    ROADS.  423 

beginning  to  climb  over  the  Alps  after  loads  of  Ameri 
can  cotton,  which  they  manufacture  and  carry  back  to 
the  transalpine  markets.  The  Swiss  are  a  fine  people ; 
honest,  simple-minded  republicans — only  they  do  not 
understand  what  liberty  is.  They  think  it  is  liberty  in 
the  canton  Vaud,  to  compel  Christian  ministers  to  read 
their  state  proclamations  against  themselves,  and  do  the 
bidding  of  the  state  in  all  respects.  But  the  ministers 
think  otherwise,  and  having  taken  their  stand,  with  the 
noble  Yinet  at  their  head,  incurring  silence,  suspension, 
want,  and  even  the  fear  of  death,  they  are  some  of 
them  learning,  in  their  trials,  what  spiritual  religion  is 
—which  they  did  not  know  before.  Their  persecutors, 
too,  who  are  strangely  enough  called  the  radical  party, 
are  now  rioting  against  the  Jesuits  and  for  their  expul 
sion,  which  is  just  as  bad  in  principle.  But  religion  is 
reviving;  the  Swiss  mind  is  at  work;  true  liberty  is 
feeling  out  its  way.  For  long  ages,  this  little  nation  of 
republicans  lay  locked  within  their  mountain  fastnesses, 
shut  away  from  the  living  world ;  but  now,  the  gates 
are  open ;  the  living  world  has  come,  and  they  feel  its 
quickening  power.  The  valleys  are  threaded  with  fine, 
broad  Eoads;  the  lakes  fronted  by  palaces,  built  for 
hotels— the  only  palaces  known  to  the  Swiss;  Kail- 
roads  are  projected;  and  some  even  think  it  possible 
that  a  steam-car  may  sometime  be  heard  thundering 
through  the  Alps,  and  making  its  appearance  in  Italy, 
on  the  other  side. 

But,   for  the    present,    we  must  go   over  and   not 
through  them.     Here,  again,  we  find  four  stupendous 


424  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

Eoads,  all  virtually  new,  climbing  over  these  everlast 
ing  hills  ;  spanning  chasms,  plunging  through  promon 
tories  of  rock,  skirting  gulfs,  shedded  with  stone  arches, 
here  and  there,  for  the  avalanches  to  slide  over ;  pass 
ing,  at  the  summit,  between  peaks  of  eternal  ice; 
smooth,  wide,  easy  of  ascent  and  descent;  northern 
Europe  pouring  over  into  southern,  Protestantism  into 
Popery,  and  Popery  back  into  Protestantism;  new 
ideas  and  old  traveling  back  and  forth,  and  passing  on 
their  way ;  and  commerce,  with  its  heavy  loaded  teams, 
rolling  securely  over  these  icy  ramparts,  in  attempting 
which,  a  Hannibal  lost  three-fourths  of  his  army. 
Climbing  over  one  of  these  passes,  that,  we  will  say,  of 
the  Simplon,  the  traveler  is  made  to  feel,  possibly,  for 
the  first  time  in  his  life,  what  is  in  a  Eoad ;  how  much 
it  means,  what  victories  it  signifies;  what  myrmidons 
of  thought,  more  powerful  than  armies,  are  pouring 
over  it,  daily  and  nightly,  from  nation  to  nation. 
Meditating  thus,  a  strange  power  rushes  upon  him,  as 
if  he  had  somehow  fallen,  for  once,  into  the  high-road 
of  destiny  itself.  Is  it  that  Napoleon,  whom  some  have 
called  the  man  of  destiny,  is  represented  in  this  work? 
Is  it  that  a  force  is  every  were  displayed,  which  mocks 
the  sternest  frowns  of  nature,  and  tramps  across  her 
wildest  gulfs  of  terror?  Or,  is  it,  rather,  that  he  pic 
tures  the  fierce  soldier,  storming  these  icy  solitudes,  not, 
as  he  thought,  to  open  a  way  for  his  armies,  but  a  way, 
rather,  wherein  the  new  future  of  Italy  shall  descend 
upon  her?  Here  it  is,  if  never  before,  that  he  con 
ceives  the  moral  import  of  a  Road. 


THE    DAY    OF    ROADS.  425 

He  reaches  Milan,  and  first  of  all  he  notices,  with  a 
smile,  that  they  are  here  also  visibly  thinking  of  mo 
tion,  having  torn  up  the  rough,  old  pavement  of  their 
streets,  to  lay  down  smooth  lines  of  floor,  in  the  tracks 
of  the  wheels,  for  easing  and  expediting  their  motion. 
Noting  this,  as  a  symptom,  he  is  not  surprised  to  see 
that  this  ancient  and  many  times  ruined  city,  is  reviv 
ing  once  more.  He  pursues  his  way  towards  Yenice, 
passing  the  once  splendid  cities  of  Bergamo,  Brescia, 
Verona,  Vincenza,  Padua,  on  a  fine,  broad,  macadam 
ized  Eoad  constructed  by  the  Austrian  viceroy.  The 
signs  of  improvement  are  few  and  sometimes  display 
the  marks  of  a  people  only  half  awake.  On  this  mag 
nificent  Eoad,  for  example,  the  diligence  will  have,  for 
its  outfit,  a  conductor  and  two  postillions,  one  for  each 
span  of  horses.  But  the  postillions  can  not  agree, 
whether  to  ride  fast  or  slow ;  they  stop  every  mile  or 
two ;  the  hindmost  disconnects  the  horses  of  the  fore 
most,  and  he,  in  turn,  wheels  into  the  path,  that  the 
other  may  not  proceed  without  him ;  they  threaten  and 
storm  at  each  other,  and  the  conductor  swears  at  both, 
and  thus  the  magnificent  Eoad  comes,  at  last,  in  the 
practical  result,  to  a  very  sorry  figure,  not  at  all  re 
lieved  by  the  liveries,  which  connect  the  official  dignity 
of  the  government  with  such  an  exhibition  of  mock  en 
terprise.  Such,  now,  is  the  beginning  of  life  in  Aus 
tria.  When  Austria  is  covered  with  Eailroads,  and 
quickened  throughout  by  commerce,  when  private  en 
terprise  has  come  into  powerful  action,  then  will  a  sin 
gle  man  do  the  work  of  these  three ;  and  doing  it  for 

36* 


426  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

himself,  it  will  be  well  done,  done  with  so  much  of 
character,  that,  without  either  jack-boots  or  feathers,  or 
the  official  horn  hung  under  his  shoulder,  the  deficient 
livery  will  not  be  missed. 

At  Peschiera,  a  famous  military  pass,  where  the  Min- 
cio  issues  from  the  Lago  di  Garda,  the  road  passes 
through  an  enormous  fortification,  whose  cannon  bristle 
in  the  face  of  the  traveler,  as  he  crosses  the  moats  and 
winds  round  the  buttresses.  Towards  this  fort  cannon 
are  trailing  and  troops  marching;  for  the  Austrian 
government  has  just  heard  that  there  is  another  out 
break  in  the  Eoman  States,  and  knows  not  what  will 
come  of  it — a  sign  which  has  much  meaning  in  it.  At 
old  Padua,  he  finds  a  Kailroad  leading  down  to  the 
coast,  off  Venice.  And  here,  the  Venetians  are  just 
finishing  a  viaduct,  on  high  stone  arches,  through  the" 
sea,  six  miles  in  length,  over  which  the  locomotive  is 
to  be  rolled  directly  into  old  Venice — that  same  Venice 
which  was  thrown,  like  a  stranded  vessel,  on  a  mud 
shoal,  out  at  sea,  to  escape  the  robbers  from  the  land, 
and  obtain  a  safe  mart  for  merchandise.  Every  year  it 
was  married,  in  a  public  pomp,  to  the  sea ;  now  it  is 
married,  in  bands  of  iron,  to  the  land.  When,  too,  this 
Road  is  extended  to  Milan,  as  it  soon  will  be,  com 
manding  all  the  commerce  of  Lombardy  and  Switzer 
land,  Venice  will  revive  again,  and  will  probably  be 
come  more  prosperous  even,  than  when  it  was  called 
Queen  of  the  Sea,  and  had  the  commerce  of  the  world. 
Already  it  begins  to  show  a  new  air  of  life,  and,  what 
is  truly  characteristic  of  the  age,  it  is  building  Roads 


THE    DAY    OF    KOADS.  427 

within  itself,  or,  what  is  the  same,  spanning  with 
bridges,  here  and  there,  its  numerous  water  alleys,  to 
facilitate  communication.  And  so,  old  Yenice,  having 
the  "Bridge  of  Sighs"  walled  up,  lighted  with  gas, 
made  a  free  port  of  entry,  and  married  to  the  land, 
looks  up,  as  a  bride  again,  and  smiles.  That  new  ideas 
are  also  in  Yenice,  which  promise  more  than  all  mere 
physical  benefits,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  affirm. 

The  traveler  now  crosses  the  Appenines,  we  will 
suppose,  to  Florence — much  of  the  way  on  a  new  and 
excellent  Eoad.  He  passes  Bologna,  a  city  of  the  Eo- 
man  States,  on  his  way.  Here  many  signs  of  fresh  cre 
ation  are  visible,  and,  as  every  body  knows  and  might 
know  beforehand,  there  is  something  of  uneasiness,  in 
this  creative  spirit.  The  Bolognese  have  wants,  and, 
sometime  or  other,  will  have  liberty  to  speak  of  their 
wants.  Florence  is  a  neat,  vigorous  looking  city ;  and 
Tuscany,  generally,  wears  a  look  of  comfort.  Here  are 
law  and  justice,  and  the  old  spirit  of  liberty  is  still  visi 
ble,  in  the  character  of  the  people.  Nowhere,  beyond 
the  Alps,  is  the  Eoman  government,  or  that  of  the 
Pope,  so  thoroughly  despised.  Florence,  the  old  en 
emy,  the  deadly  rival  and  scourge  of  Pisa,  is  now  just 
about  to  be  married  to  Pisa,  by  a  Eailroad;  it  being 
now  discovered  that  both  cities  can  exist  together,  and 
will,  in  fact,  only  assist  the  prosperity  one  of  the  other. 
Alas,  that  so  much  blood,  and  fire,  and  wrath,  should 
have  been  expended  on  a  mistake,  so  easily  seen  in  this 
age  of  commerce  and  Eoads. 

"We  pass  on  to  the  States  of  the  Church.     And  here 


428  THE    DAY    OF    KOADS. 

the  people  are  growling,  with  a  half  stifled  voice,  for 
something  which  they  can  not  get.  Why  this  ill- 
nature?  What  is  it  they  want?  Why,  they  want 
Roads,  and  the  Holy  Father  will  not  consent.  And 
why  do  they  want  Roads  ?  have  they  not  all  the  Roads 
they  ever  had,  and  these  in  good  order,  some  of  them 
newly  paved,  for  many  miles,  and  almost  as  nicely  as 
the  Appian  Way  itself?  Have  they  not  a  good  new 
Road  to  Naples  also?  Assuredly  something  new, 
some  dim  hope  of  something  better,  has  got  into  the 
heads  of  the  people,  which  mars  their  content.  At 
length,  the  Holy  Father  dies  and  immediately  a  soft 
smile  relaxes  their  faces.  Regarding  him  as  the  very 
representative  of  God,  their  mourning  over  him  takes 
on  yet  an  involuntary  smile ; — because  now  they  will 
have  Roads !  But  Roads  were  not  all  they  wanted,  it 
was  only  safer  to  speak  of  Roads ;  they  had  some  want 
of  law,  personal  safety,  freer  marts  of  trade,  tribunals 
clear  of  bribery.  Well,  the  new  Pope  enters  on  his 
office,  and  he  says,  yes,  let  there  be  Roads,  Railroads, 
one  to  Civita  Vecchia,  one  to  Ancona  on  the  other 
shore,  one  to  Florence  in  the  north,  one  to  meet  the 
Naples  Road  in  the  south.  He  will  endeavor,  also,  to 
do  something  for  education ;  he  will  secularize  the  tri 
bunals  of  law,  and  the  bureaus  of  state,  and  take  off  the 
enormous  duties,  which  had  thrown  all  commerce  into 
the  hands  of  smugglers.  He  may  not  be  able  to  do  all 
this ;  for  it  is  already  clear  that  the  priests  are  against 
him  and  they  are  legion,  both  in  name  and  nature. 
But  the  Roads  will  be  built,  the  robbers  will  lose  their 


THE    DAY    OF    ROADS.  429 

occupation,  trade  will  spring  up,  the  English  travelers, 
who  have  created,  at  length,  these  new  wants  in  the 
people,  will  pour  in  more  copiously  than  ever,  bringing 
new  ideas  still,  and  the  very  locomotives,  rushing  into 
the  eternal  city,  and  rolling  their  smoke  over  St.  Pe 
ter's,  will  come  as  new  ideas  and  types  of  modern 
power.  No  man  could  well  understand  the  age  of 
Shamgar,  without  a  visit  to  the  Eoman  States.  It  is 
soon  to  be  over.  The  dark  middle  age  of  the  Judges 
is  coming  to  an  end.  Now,  most  assuredly,  comes 
light,  education,  justice,  and  with  all  these,  liberty,  re 
ligious  and  civil  liberty. 

"We  return  to  France,  where  our  excursion  closes. 
France,  as  you  well  know,  is  also  building  Eoads.  She 
had  fine  Eoads,  many  of  them  paved  with  squared 
stone  before;  these  were  not  enough  to  satisfy  her 
commercial  and  manufacturing  activity ;  for  France,  if 
I  do  not  mistake,  is  improving  more  rapidly  than  any 
country  in  Europe.  The  great  estates  of  the  nobles 
and  the  abbeys  were  broken  up,  in  the  violence  of  the 
Ee volution  and  under  the  reign  of  Napoleon,  so  that 
now  the  landed  property  of  France  is  well  distributed, 
compared  with  almost  any  country  in  Europe.  Hope 
dawns  on  labor,  and  industry  opens  a  new  era  in  phys 
ical  advancement.  Already  a  Eailroad  penetrates  the 
old  city  of  Nismes,  so  mournfully  distinguished  in  the 
history  of  the  Huguenots.  Another  will  shortly  con 
nect  Marseilles  with  Avignon,  and  the  walls  of  the  old 
inquisition,  where  the  noble  Eienzi  perished  a  martyr 
to  liberty,  will  shake  at  the  sound  of  the  engine  and 


430  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

the  coming  of  a  renovated  age.  So  there  are  Eailroads 
spinning  out  of  Paris,  in  every  direction,  and  enough 
are  already  projected  to  cross  nearly  every  department 
of  the  nation.  France  also  desires  peace ;  for  she  well 
knows  the  import  of  war,  and  though  she  glories  in 
Napoleon,  she  does  not  care  to  risk  all  her  commerce 
and  her  growing  prosperity,  for  the  chance  of  seeing 
another.  Meantime  she  talks,  in  her  parliament,  of  a 
more  equal  and  complete  Christian  liberty.  And, 
what  is  better  still,  many  hearts  are  beginning  to  yearn, 
in  all  parts  of  the  nation,  for  some  better  light,  some 
more  spiritual  religion,  such  as  meets  the  wants  of  their 
being.  Old  superstitions  are  breaking  down  ;  atheism, 
already  old,  is  shaking  with  decrepitude.  Philosophers 
talk  of  religion  with  such  kind  of  wisdom  as  they  can ; 
hamlets  and  villages,  here  and  there,  turn  upon  their 
priests  as  impostors,  and  many  signs  of  a  great  religious 
renovation  appear.  Sufficient  proof  have  we  here,  that 
our  age  of  utility  and  of  Roads  is  not,  of  course,  losing 
the  sense  of  religion  and  not  likely  to  end,  in  the  mea 
ger  way,  which  many  predict. 

Most  of  the  facts  included  in  this  brief  sketch  or  re 
view,  it  is  well  understood  were  known  to  you  before. 
But  it  has  not  been  my  object  to  instruct  you  in  regard 
to  facts,  so  much  as  to  hold  them  before  you,  in  their 
moral  connections,  as  symbols  of  the  age  and  of  what 
God  is  working,  in  the  age.  In  proposing  a  discourse 
on  Roads,  I  did  it  in  the  hope  that  I  should  thus  be 
able  to  give  you  a  more  distinct  apprehension,  than  in 


THE    DAY    OF    ROADS.  431 

any  other  way,  of  your  age  and  its  characteristics — its 
relation  to  past  ages,  its  future  prospects,  and  the  meth 
ods  by  which  it  is  reaching  after  results  of  use,  of  com 
mon  beneficence  and  common  humanity.  In  no  other 
way  can  you  understand  so  well  what  is  going  on  in 
the  world,  and  what  is  preparing,  and  what  kind  of 
ideas  are  at  work,  whether  new  or  old,  malignant  01 
hopeful,  as  simply  to  note  that  this  is  a  Eoad-building 
age.  The  dark  age  built  castles,  on  the  inaccessible 
peaks  of  mountains,  to  get  away  from  enemies,  we 
build  cottages,  on  public  Koads,  which  we  like  to  have 
as  perfect  as  possible,  to  facilitate  access  and  motion. 
The  Egyptians  built  pyramids  over  the  dead,  we  build 
Roads  to  give  life  and  swiftness  to  the  living.  The 
Chinese  erect  a  wall  to  shut  themselves  in ;  we  open 
Eoads  and  ports  and  span  the  ocean  itself  with  floating 
bridges,  that  we  may  go  everywhere  and  behold  the 
coming  of  all  people. 

And  what  is  specially  remarkable,  this  Road-building 
movement  is  the  first  example,  in  the  history  of  man 
kind,  where  all  the  great  nations  of  the  world  have 
moved  together,  and  been  actuated  by  a  common  aim. 
One  has  given  itself  to  commerce,  another  to  arms  and 
conquest,  another  to  art,  another  to  the  sea,  another  to 
agriculture.  Now,  all  are  for  commerce,  interchange, 
travel  and  motion  together.  And,  what  is  yet  more 
sublime  and  hopeful,  they  all  are  feeling  the  pressure 
of  the  same  great  moral  ideas,  peace,  liberty,  education, 
religious  light  and  unity.  The  desire  of  physical  im 
provement  holds  a  natural  and  philosophic  connection 


432  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

with  all  these  great  ideas,  moral  and  religious.  In  our 
physical  improvements  we  seek  ends  of  beneficence 
such  as  the  ease  and  cheapness  of  production,  the  con 
venience  of  a  market,  the  facility  of  intercourse  between 
the  masses  of  society,  and  thus  we  pass  over  to  think 
of  intellectual  and  moral  results,  peace,  knowledge,  lib 
erty,  holy  virtue,  heavenly  unity — our  ideal  of  BENEFI 
CENCE  allows  no  limitation ;  it  associates  every  thing 
good,  by  virtue  of  its  own  goodness ;  and  accordingly, 
it  will  be  found,  much  as  we  hear  of  the  sordid  spirit 
of  this  age  of  utility,  that  the  very  thought  which 
moves  us,  in  our  universal  Koad-buildmg,  is  one  that 
can  not  be  satisfied,  till  every  thing  included  in  benefi 
cence,  as  an  ideal,  is  fulfilled. 

WHAT  is  TO  COME?  That  is  a  question  opening 
visions  of  future  good,  which,  though  we  can  not 
prophecy,  we  can  not  but  indulge. 

Undoubtedly  a  new  era  of  wealth  is  at  hand.  Com 
merce  never  has  failed  to  bring  wealth  to  any  nation, 
and  it  can  enrich  all  as  easily  as  one.  Nay,  one  the 
more  easily,  that  it  is  permitted  to  enrich  all.  It  fol 
lows,  of  necessity,  that  the  population  of  the  world  will 
be  vastly  increased. 

Wars,  it  will  also  be  seen,  can  not,  if  they  occur,  be  as 
long  as  they  have  been  heretofore.  Where  it  is  possi 
ble  to  transport  an  army,  with  all  its  supplies  and  mu 
nitions,  a  thousand  miles  in  three  days,  pouring  one  na 
tion  into  the  bosom  of  another,  almost  at  will,  it  is  evi 
dent  that  wars  must  come  to  their  issue,  in  the  fall  of 


THE     DAY    OF    ROADS.  433 

one  party  or  the  other,  in  a  very  short  time.  This  will 
create  an  indisposition  in  the  nations  to  engage  in  war. 
The  conviction,  too,  that  nations  have  a  natural  interest 
in  each  other  and  are  not  natural  enemies,  as  was  once 
the  current  maxim  of  the  world ;  the  advantages  also 
of  commerce  and  the  noble  triumphs  of  peace,  will  all 
conspire  to  create  a  common  opinion,  at  length,  against 
war.  The  absurdity  of  war,  too,  will  have  been  abund 
antly  shown  and  its  disagreement  with  the  great  princi 
ples  of  Christianity.  The  appeal  to  arms,  therefore,  as 
a  means  of  redress  for  inj  uries,  will  be  classed  with  the 
old  method  of  trial  by  combat,  and  will  disappear,  we 
may  hope,  in  the  same  manner.  Prophecy  will  thus 
fulfill  her  holy  vision — the  nations  will  learn  war  no 
more. 

Another  promise  will  follow  in  the  train;  for  as 
many  run  to  and  fro,  knowledge  will  be  increased.  I 
am  fully  sensible,  as  you  know,  to  the  dangers  which 
beset  an  age  of  travel  and  motion.  Every  good  brings 
its  dangers  with  it.  And  did  we  not  see  a  desire  of 
universal  education  everywhere  attending  and  keeping 
company  with  the  extension  of  facilities  for  travel,  we 
might  well  fear,  lest  so  much  of  running  to  and  fro  will 
end  in  a  general  destruction  of  all  sober  habits ;  pro 
ducing,  at  last,  a  state  of  society,  which  is  made  up  only 
of  surfaces,  emptied  of  every  solid  principle.  But  the 
schools,  we  observe,  are  spreading,  as  the  Roads  are  ex 
tending;  and  the  hope  of  attaining  to  a  better  social 
state  is,  in  fact,  the  common  stimulus  of  both.  The 
governments  of  Christendom  are  everywhere  consenting 

37 


THE    DAY    OF    ROADS* 

to  the  fact,  that  they  exist  for  the  good  of  all  who  live 
under  them.  And  this  thought,  shaping  their  policy, 
gives  them  an  interest  in  the  masses  under  them,  makes 
them  protectors  of  industry,  and  prepares  them  to  assist 
and  encourage  industry,  by  favoring  such  a  distribution 
of  property,  as  will  best  effect  an  object  so  worthy. 
Having  it  for  their  problem,  to  make  every  man  as 
valuable  as  possible  to  himself  and  to  his  country,  and 
becoming  more  and  more  inspired,  as  we  may  hope,  by 
an  aim  so  lofty,  every  means  will  be  used  to  diffuse 
education,  to  fortify  morals,  and  favor  the  holy  power 
of  religion.  This  being  done,  there  is  no  longer  any 
danger  from  travel.  On  the  contrary,  the  masses  of 
society  will,  by  this  means,  be  set  forward  continually 
in  character  and  intelligence.  As  they  run,  knowledge 
will  be  increased.  The  roads  will  themselves  be 
schools ;  for  here  they  will  see  the  great  world  moving 
and  feel  themselves  to  be  a  part  of  it.  Their  narrow, 
local  prejudices  will  be  worn  off,  their  superstitions  will 
be  forgotten.  Every  people  will  begin  to  understand 
and  appreciate  every  other,  and  a  common  light  will  be 
kindled  in  all  bosoms. 

The  effects  which  are  to  result,  in  matters  of  religion, 
from  the  universal  interchange  of  travel,  in  our  age  of 
Roads,  are  a  subject  of  yet  graver  import.  Man  lives 
for  religion.  Human  society  exists  for  religion.  And 
it  is  remarkable  how  all  the  great  movements  of  society, 
for  the  last  fifty  years,  the  wars,  diplomacies,  and 
even  the  public  wrongs  of  the  world,  have  tended,  uni 
versally  and  even  visibly,  to  favor  the  extension  of 


1    THE    DAY    OF    ROADS.  435 

Christian  truth,  and  invigorate  the  efforts  of  Christian 
love.  Observing  a  fact  so  palpable  in  all  the  external 
doings  of  the  nations,  who  can  withhold  a  suspicion 
that  a  correspondent  aim  penetrates  the  internal  work 
of  society,  and,  of  course,  that  our  age  of  Koads  has 
some  holy  purpose  of  God  fulfilling,  in  its  social  revolu 
tions,  which  connects  with  the  coming  reign  of  Christ 
on  earth? 

Manifestly,  freedom  of  thought  and  opinion  is  soon 
to  be  universal,  and  this  will  throw  all  truth  upon  the 
decision  of  evidence.  Then,  force  being  no  longer  em 
ployed  to  constrain  men's  opinions,  the  false  antagonism 
of  fear  and  passion  will  no  longer  disturb  the  balance 
of  the  Christian  mind,  as  now,  and  truth  will  rule  by 
her  own  right,  in  her  own  field.  Opinions,  being  de 
termined  only  by  argument  and  evidence,  will  naturally 
approximate.  The  Christian  mind,  liberalized  by  inter 
course,  will  suffer  a  more  enlarged  charity,  and  the 
charity  of  forbearance  will  be  followed  by  the  charity 
of  love,  The  boundaries  of  nations,  spanned  by  bands 
of  iron,  crossed  and  recrossed,  many  times  a  day,  as 
freely  as  the  birds  of  the  air  fly  over  them  and  as  swiftly, 
will  cease  at  length  to  be  felt.  The  Koads  of  intercourse 
will  create  vital  bonds  of  unity  between  nations,  and 
a  common  circulation,  like  that  of  the  ducts  of  the 
body,  will  make  the  members  one,  as  by  a  common 
life. 

Meantime,  there  is  an  assimilating  power  in  inter 
course,  which  can  not  be  over-estimated.  So  great  is 
this  power,  that  every  new  Road  of  travel,  which  expe- 


436  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

dites  intercourse  between  the  older  and  newer  portions 
of  our  country,  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  great  moral  ben 
efit.  Let  the  North  and  the  South,  the  East  and  the 
West,  from  Maine  to  Oregon,  be  connected  with  Roads 
of  iron,  as  soon  as  possible.  The  greatest  danger, 
which  threatens  us  now,  is  not  Romanism,  but  barba 
rism;  that  wildness,  lawlessness  and  violence,  which 
result  from  distance  and  isolation.  Let  distance,  if 
possible,  be  annihilated,  let  speed  have  a  race  with 
emigration,  and  every  straggler  of  the  woods  be  held  in 
close  proximity  with  civilization,  law  and  religion; 
and  then  the  assimilating  power,  which  resides  in  the 
better  forms  of  society,  will  pervade  and  shape  the 
whole  mass  into  itself.  It  seems  also  to  be  the  mag 
nificent  purpose  of  God,  in  our  age  of  Roads,  to  set 
this  same  power  of  mutual  assimilation  at  work,  on  a 
yet  broader  scale,  and  so  as  to  include  all  the  churches 
and  nations  of  Christendom — so  that  one  part  may  give 
to  another  what  it  wants,  and  every  church  and  nation 
find  its  complement  in  every  other.  A  feeling  of  ap 
proximation,  or  a  feeling  after  approximation,  is  al 
ready  evident.  What  was  it,  in  fact,  but  a  lively  and 
free  intercourse,  which  prompted  a  desire  of  union  so 
remarkable  as  that  which  was  manifested  by  the  late 
convocation  at  London?  In  that  fact,  which,  twenty- 
years  ago,  was  not  in  the  conception  of  man,  you  may 
see  the  first  fruits  of  Roads.  More  and  greater  will  ap 
pear  in  due  time ;  for  God,  I  am  persuaded,  is  prepar 
ing  results  of  vaster  compass  than  have  yet  appeared. 
In  government,  we  have,  as  yet,  nothing  perfect,  and 


THE    DAY    OF    KOADS.  437 

yet  we  have  all  something  good  to  contribute. 
Thrown  together,  by  perpetual  intercourse,  and  having 
it  for  our  ideal  to  advance  society  and  man,  we  shall 
naturally  be  assimilated  most,  to  that  which  most  com 
mands  our  respect;  and  thus  we  shall  mutually  con 
tribute  what  we  have,  and  receive  what  we  want.  In 
government,  for  example,  England  may  contribute  the 
element  of  prescriptive  order  and  legal  energy ;  Prussia, 
that  of  system  and  complete,  scientific  distribution; 
Borne,  that  of  divine  authority,  by  which  law  becomes 
the  ordinance  of  God — an  element  which,  with  us,  is 
well-nigh  lost;  France,  that  of  theoretic  law;  the 
United  States,  that  of  abstract  equal  right.  Thus,  all 
contributing  and  all  receiving,  all  will  be  enriched. 
Nor  let  this  pass  for  a  mere  fancy,  or  an  unpractical 
dream.  We  are  receiving  from  each  other,  by  a  silent 
influence,  in  just  this  manner,  now;  only  not  as  con 
sciously  and  with  as  much  depth  of  impression,  as  we 
may  hereafter,  when  livelier  and  more  extensive  inter 
course  has  brought  us  into  a  closer  sympathy,  and 
travels  and  discussions  have  exhibited  the  points  most 
worthy  of  respect,  in  the  institutions  of  all.  So  in 
religion,  the  church  of  England  may  contribute  impres 
sions  favorable  to  some  kind  of  liturgical  order.  Ger 
many  may  offer  scripture  learning  and  all  possible 
views  of  Christian  doctrine.  Rome  may  come  into  the 
assimilating  process,  to  infuse  a  solemn  conviction  of 
the  need  of  catholic  unity,  in  the  Christian  family. 
France,  if  she  returns  to  religion,  may  contribute  an 
exterior  mold  of  social  grace  and  Christian  refinement. 
"  37* 


438  THE    DAY    OF    ROADS. 

The  United  States  may  pour  in  the  element  of  spiritual 
simplicity  and  practical  activity. 

God  is  wiser  than  we,  and  carries  vaster  purposes 
in  His  bosom,  and  broader  truths,  I  am  persuaded, 
than  our  childish  thoughts  have  comprehended,  or 
conceived.  Therefore,  doubtless,  it  would  be  much- 
for  us  to  gain,  in  this  matter  of  religion,  if  we  could 
yield  the  possibility  that  we  are  none  of  us  infalli 
ble,  or  perfectly  wise,  in  every  thing,  and  suffer  the 
hope  that  He  is  now  pouring  the  nations  together,  in 
these  last  days,  that  He  may  assimilate  their  views  and 
fill  out  the  glorious  orb  of  Christian  truth  and  beauty ; 
and  thus  unite  all  Christendom,  in  a  common  effort 
to  fill  this  world  of  sin  with  the  light  of  Emmanuel. 

Such,  briefly,  are  the  magnificent  hopes  that  are 
now  set  before  us,  in  the  prospect  of  the  coming  ages. 
What  forms  of  social  beauty  may  be  realized,  what 
structures  of  art  may  be  raised,  what  works  of  genius 
created,  by  the  renovated  wealth,  intelligence,  and 
piety  of  the  world,  I  will  not  stop  to  conceive. 
Enough  to  know  what  transcends  all  such  conjectures, 
and  rises  on  the  mind  as  the  summit  of  all  grandeur 
and  sublimity,  that  Christ  the  Lord  shall  ascend  into 
his  throne  and  reign,  in  the  moral  majesty  of  peace 
and  righteousness,  over  the  admiring  nations.  Seeing, 
then,  the  nations  moved,  for  the  first  time,  by  a 
common  impulse,  and  preparing  to  embrace,  in  the 
ways  described,  we  will  not  fear  to  view  a  feet  so 
wonderful,  as  a  forerunner  of  the  Son  of  Man.  We 
will  reapply  the  fit  words  of  prophecy,  and  say— 


THE    DAY    OF    ROADS.  439 

"Prepare  ye  the  way  of  the  Lord,  make  his  paths 
straight.  Every  valley  shall  be  filled,  and  every 
mountain  and  hill  shall  be  brought  low,  and  the 
crooked  shall  be  made  straight,  and  the  rough  ways 
shall  be  made  smooth,  and — ALL  FLESH  SHALL  SEE 

THE   SALVATION  OF   GOD." 


XII 

RELIGIOUS  MUSIC* 


A  QUARTER  of  a  century  since,  in  the  year  1826,  at 
which  time  I  was  a  member  of  this  venerable  university, 
the  Beethoven  Society  was  organized,  having  for  its  ob 
ject  the  cultivation  of  music  as  an  art,  but  more  espe 
cially  of  sacred  music.  It  was  designed  to  be  perpetual, 
though  I  am  obliged  to  acknowledge  that  we  had,  at  the 
time,  but  a  slender  faith  in  its  perpetuity.  Still  it  has 
continued  for  so  long  a  time,  maintaining,  I  believe,  a 
general  advance  in  the  noble  art  it  was  designed  to  fos 
ter,  till  now,  at  last,  having  become  able  to  furnish  a 
better  pledge  of  its  continuance,  in  the  erection  of  a  fine, 
classic-toned,  organ  from  one  of  the  best  builders  in  the 
world,  it  has  seemed  fit  that  the  occasion  of  its  opening 
should  be  signalized  in  some  public  manner.  In  this 
view,  and  I  suppose  principally  because  I  was  connected 
with  the  society  in  its  origin — certainly  not  because  I 
have  any  special  competence  for  the  task — I  have  been 
requested  to  offer  a  discourse  such  as  I  may  deem  ap 
propriate  to  the  occasion.  Accepting  your  invitation,  I 
derive  my  subject  from — 

*  "Delivered  before  the  Beethoven  Society  of  Yale  College,  at  the  open 
ing  of  their  new  organ,  August,  1852. 


RELIGIOUS    MUSIC.  441 

1  COR.  14:  7.  "And  even  things  without  life  giviny 
sound,  whether  pipe  or  harp,  except  they  give  a  distinction 
in  the  sounds,  how  shall  it  be  known  what  is  piped  or 
harped  f 

Every  thing  for  a  use  and  every  thing  in  its  place,  is  •, 
a  rule,  the  apostle  is  saying,  that  holds  in  spiritual  gifts 
and  exercises,  as  in  every  thing  else.  If  you  speak  with 
tongues,  let  it  not  be  as  making  only  strange  noises,  but 
let  some  one  interpret,  that  the  tongues  may  edify  and 
not  be  sounds  without  a  meaning.  It  will  not  do  for 
Christians  to  be  more  unmeaning  and  idle  in  spiritual 
gifts,  than  even  things  without  life  themselves,  the  pipes 
and  harps  and  trumpets  and  drums  of  music ;  for  these, 
when  they  give  a  sound,  give  it  with  distinctions  that 
have  a  meaning  and  a  power,  else  they  are  nought  to 
us.  The  war  trumpet  has  so  great  significance  and  au 
thority  that,  by  the  sounding  of  signals,  it  commands 
the  squadrons  of  armies,  right  and  left,  front  and  rear, 
to  advance  or  to  retreat ;  but  if  the  trumpet  gives  an 
uncertain  sound  or  a  false  signal,  if  instead  of  sounding 
the  charge  it  sounds  the  giving  of  alms,  who  shall  pre 
pare  himself  for  battle  ?  Trumpets  are  not  used  in  this 
way.  Are  voices  and  tongues  to  be  less  intelligent  or 
significant  than  tubes  of  unconscious  horn  or  metal  ? 

This  reference  of  the  apostle  to  instruments  of  music, 
you  perceive,  is  a  reference  simply  of  illustration ;  he  is 
discoursing  of  spiritual  gifts,  not  of  music.  But  he 
touches,  in  the  way  of  illustration,  two  points  of  so  great 
religious  interest,  that  I  propose,  this  evening,  to  make 
them  topics  of  my  discourse.  They  are  these,  viz.,  the 


442  RELIGIOUS    MUSIC. 

very  wonderful  fact  that  Grod  has  hidden  powers  of  music 
in  things  without  life;  and  that  when  they  are  used,  in 
right  distinctions,  or  proprieties  of  sound,  they  discourse 
what  we  know — what  meets,  interprets  and  ivorks  our  feel 
ing,  as  living  and  spiritual  creatures.  Of  these  I  shall 
speak  in  their  order,  only  endeavoring  to  confine  the 
subject,  in  great  part,  to  its  religious  import  and  appli 
cations. 

This  world  of  outward  being  has  a  fixed  relation  to 
all  the  five  senses  of  man  and  especially  to  the  two  no 
bler  of  these,  the  senses  of  sight  and  of  sound ;  the 
senses  of  touch,  taste  and  smell  being  applicable  only  to 
small  portions  of  the  material  world  and  having  as  much 
less  to  do  with  the  spiritual  economy  of  life,  as  an  intel 
lectual  and  religious  experience. 

The  senses  of  sight  and  sound  are  preeminently  con 
versable  or  social,  therefore  moral  and  religious  in 
their  connections.  And  then  of  these  two,  the  sense  of 
sight  is  more  especially  connected  with  the  understand 
ing  or  intellectual  power,  and  the  sense  of  sound  with 
the  feelings,  emotions  and  affections.  God  has  made 
the  world  to  be  a  fit  medium  for  both — to  use  the  dri 
est  figure  possible,  a  blackboard  for  the  mind,  and  a 
sounding-board  for  the  heart.  In  this  manner,  it  results 
that  we  have  two  languages,  the  language  of  thought 
and  reason  formed  in  words,  which  are  the  names  prin 
cipally  of  visible  objects;  and  the  language  of  feeling, 
which  is  made  by  tones  of  sound  different  in  time,  pitch, 
quality,  inflection — in  a  word,  by  music;  which,  for  a 


RELIGIOUS    MUSIC.  443 

long  time,  was  not  a  written  language,  but  is  now  more 
exactly  written  than  the  other.  In  speech,  or  vocal  ut 
terance,  both  languages  are  blended ;  words,  which  are 
mostly  based  in  visible  objects  and  spatial  relationships, 
being,  when  spoken,  gifted  with  additional  meanings  and 
powers  from  the  qualities  and  inflections  of  the  voice, 
instinctively  toned  or  modulated  by  the  feeling  of  those 
who  speak ;  for  it  is  not  the  words  only  of  speech  that 
have  so  great  power,  but  quite  as  much  the  living  notes 
of  music  in  which  they  are  spoken ;  notes  that  vary 
with  the  quantity  and  quality — the  volume  and  depth 
and  beauty,  or  the  dearth,  dullness,  hollowness,  coarse 
ness  of  feeling  in  the  speaker.  Hence,  too,  the  amazing 
difference  of  power  in  speakers,  who  may  speak,  or 
read,  or  recite  the  same  words.  One  does  it  without 
the  true  distinction  of  sounds,  the  other  with ;  even  as 
our  apostle  himself  observes,  apart  from  any  thought  of 
becoming  a  critic  or  professor  of  elocution  :  "  There  are, 
it  may  be,  so  many  kinds  of  voices  in  the  world  and 
none  of  them  is  without  signification." 

Hence,  also,  the  very  great  difference  you  observe 
between  the  tones  of  utterance  employed  in  a  mere  ar 
gument  to  the  understanding  or  judgment  of  men,  and 
those  which  are  used,  for  example,  in  prayer  addressed 
to  God.  We  think  nothing  of  it  probably,  but  nature 
teaches  us  to  make  a  distinction  of  sound  unawares. 
Meantime,  the  musician  who  is  able  to  catch  and  write 
down  the  tones  we  use  in  both  cases,  will  show  that  we 
speak,  in  the  former  case,  more  in  full-tone  intervals, 
and  these  coarsely  measured ;  in  the  latter,  more  in  half' 


444  RELIGIOUS    MUSIC. 

tones,  and  closer  to  the  principle  of  musical  notation. 
Just  as  we  properly  should,  because  we  are  not  dealing 
here  with  mere  notions  of  the  understanding,  but  offer 
ing  to  God  sentiments  of  penitence  and  love  and  wor 
ship.  And  yet,  since  preaching  is  so  much  a  matter  of 
address  to  the  feelings  or  sentiments  of  our  religious  na 
ture,  this  kind  of  speaking  will  have  a  distinction  of 
sound,  compared  with  other  forms  of  public  address  in 
the  senate,  or  at  the  bar.  And  so  far  has  this  distinc 
tion  prevailed  in  the  Christian  sense  of  some  nations,  as 
in  Italy,  and  particularly  in  Wales,  that  preaching  takes 
the  form  of  a  distinct,  musical  recitative.  And  on  this 
account,  it  is  said,  that  there  is  no  tongue  in  the  world, 
in  which  preaching  has  so  great  advantages,  or  exercises 
a  power  so  resistless,  as  in  the  Welch  ;  because  it  speaks 
in  the  music  of  love  and  sorrow,  and  fitly  interprets,  in 
that  manner,  the  divine  passion  of  the  cross. 

You  perceive,  in  these  suggestions,  how  closely  our 
spiritual  nature,  as  creatures  of  feeling,  is  related  to  the 
element  of  sound,  wanting  this  in  its  distinctions  for  a 
language,  as  truly  as  it  wants  the  language  of  words  for 
intellectual  discourse.  Even  as  the  poets,  who  are  na 
ture's  best  oracles,  sing : 

"  Music !  O  how  faint,  how  weak, 

Language  fades  before  thy  spell ; 
Why  should  feeling  ever  speak, 
When  thou  canst  breathe  her  soul  so  well?" 

Accordingly,  as  we  are  wont  to  argue  the  invisible 
things  of  God,  even  His  eternal  power  and  Godhead, 
from  the  things  that  are  seen,  finding  them  all  images 


RELIGIOUS    MUSIC.  445 

of  thought  and  vehicles  of  intelligence,  so  we  have  an 
argument  for  God  more  impressive,  in  one  view,  because 
the  matter  of  it  is  so  deep  and  mysterious,  from  the  fact 
that  a  grand,  harmonic,  soul-interpreting  law  of  music, 
pervades  all  the  objects  of  the  material  creation,  and 
that  things  without  life,  all  metals  and  woods  and  val 
leys  and  mountains  and  waters,  are  tempered  with  dis 
tinctions  of  sound,  and  toned  to  be  a  language  to  the 
feeling  of  the  heart.  It  is  as  if  God  had  made  the  world 
about  us  to  be  a  grand  organ  of  music,  so  that  our  feel 
ings  might  have  play  in  it,  as  our  understanding  has  in 
the  light  of  the  sun  and  the  outward  colors  and  forms 
of  things.  What  is  called  the  musical  scale,  or  octave, 
is  fixed  in  the  original  appointments  of  sound,  just  as 
absolutely  and  definitely  as  the  colors  of  the  rainbow  or 
prism  in  the  optical  properties  and  laws  of  light.  And 
the  visible  objects  of  the  world  are  not  more  certainly 
shaped  and  colored  to  us,  under  the  exact  laws  of  light 
and  the  prism,  than  they  are  tempered  and  toned,  as 
objects  audible,  to  give  distinctions  of  sound  by  their 
vibrations,  in  the  terms  of  the  musical  octave.  It  is  not 
simply  that  we  hear  the  sea  roar  and  the  floods  clap 
their  hands  in  anthems  of  joy ;  it  is  not  that  we  hear 
the  low  winds  sigh,  or  the  storms  howl  dolefully,  or  the 
ripples* break  peacefully  on  the  shore,  or  the  waters 
dripping  sadly  from  the  rock,  or  the  thunders  crashing 
in  horrible  majesty  through  the  pavements  of  heaven ; 
not  only  do  all  the  natural  sounds  we  hear  come  to  us 
in  tones  of  music  as  interpreters  of  feeling,  but  there  is 
hid  in  the  secret  temper  and  substance  of  all  matter  a 

38 


446  RELIGIOUS    MUSIC. 

silent  music,  that  only  waits  to  sound,  and  become  a 
voice  of  utterance  to  the  otherwise  unutterable  feeling 
of  our  heart — a  voice,  if  we  will  have  it,  of  love  and 
worship  to  the  God  of  all. 

First,  there  is  a  musical  scale  in  the  laws  of  the  air  it 
self,  exactly  answering  to  the  musical  sense  or  law  of 
the  soul.  Next,  there  is,  in  all  substances,  a  tempera 
ment  of  quality  related  to  both ;  so  that  whatever  kind 
of  feeling  there  may  be  in  a  soul,  war  and  defiance,  fes 
tivity  and  joy,  sad  remembrance,  remorse,  pity,  peni 
tence,  self-denial,  love,  adoration,  may  find  some  fit  me 
dium  of  sound  in  which  to  express  itself.  And,  what 
is  not  less  remarkable,  connected  with  all  these  forms 
of  substances,  there  are  mathematical  laws  of  length  and 
breadth,  or  definite  proportions  of  each,  and  reflective 
angles,  that  are  every  way  as  exact  as  those  which  reg 
ulate  the  colors  of  the  prism,  the  images  of  the  mirror, 
or  the  telescopic  light  of  astronomic  worlds — mathemat 
ics  for  the  heart  as  truly  as  for  the  head. 

Accordingly,  we  find,  so  close  is  the  hidden  music  of 
substances  to  the  sympathy  and  feeling  of  man,  that  he 
begins,  at  once,  instinctively,  to  try  them  by  his  voice 
and  feeling,  and  learn  what  distinctions  of  sound  they 
will  make.  And  so  instruments  of  music  begin  to  be 
invented  and  used,  even  before  the  flood ;  as  early,  in 
deed,  as  the  keeping  of  herds  and  cattle  and  the  com 
forts  of  the  nomadic  life  are  introduced.  Jabal  is  the 
"father"  of  these,  his  brother  Jubal  of  the  other;  that 
is,  "  of  the  harp  and  the  organ  ;"  one  a  stringed  instru 
ment,  and  the  other,  not  an  organ  in  our  modern  sense 


RELIGIOUS  'MUSIC.  447 

of  the  term,  but  a  pandean  or  shepherd's  pipe,  the  prin 
ciple  of  which  is  the  same.  From  that  time  to  the 
present,  the  silent  music  or  musical  property  of  things 
without  life  has  been  more  and  more  fully  opened  to  dis 
covery,  till  at  last  we  find  that  every  known  substance, 
wood,  shell,  horn,  glass,  copper,  iron,  steel,  brass,  silver, 
strings  and  skins  and  pasteboard  and  even  India  rub 
ber,  wait  to  be  voices  of  feeling  and  sing  the  passions 
of  the  human  spirit.  Nay,  even  the  very  stones  of  the 
field  have  their  notes,  hid  within  them,  and  are  ready 
to  break  out  in  song.  For  we  hear  that  the  stroke  of 
flints  upon  each  other  has  been  actually  managed  so  as 
to  make  an  instrument  of  music  and  discourse  in  strains 
of  living  melody — suggesting  the  probable  fact  that  the 
mysterious  laws  of  crystallization  have  a  secret  affiance 
with  the  powers  of  music,  and  so  with  the  passions  of 
the  human  heart. 

"  There's  music  in  the  sighing  of  a  reed, 
There's  music  in  the  gushing  of  a  rill, 
There's  music  in  all  things,  if  men  had  ears, 
Their  earth  is  but  an  echo  of  the  spheres." 

Neither  can  it  be  said  that  all  these  substances  with 
out  life  have  simply  a  power  to  make  sounds  or  aerial 
vibrations,  taking  advantage  of  which  fact  we  ourselves 
arrange  them  so  as  to  make  sounds  of  a  given  pitch, 
and  that  so  the  music  they  yield  is  really  of  man  alone. 
For  though  it  be  true  that  a  given  shape  and  arrange 
ment  is  necessary  to  the  effect,  the  laws  of  that  arrange 
ment  and  of  musical  rhythm  are  first  established  in 
souls  and  in  the  air  as  related  to  souls,  and  then, 


RELIGIOUS    MUSIC. 

besides,  all  these  substances  without  life  are  so  con 
structed  as  to  make  distinctions  of  sound  as  to  quality, 
wholly  apart  from  distinctions  of  pitch,  and  it  is  the 
mysterious  quality  of  sounds  that  makes  them  inter 
preters  of  human  feeling,  quite  as  much  as  their  varie 
ties  of  pitch.  Hence,  it  is  found,  that  in  instruments  of 
wood,  the  different  woods  have  all  distinct  qualities  of 
sound,  and  that  in  some  of  them  only  a  given  kind  of 
wood,  carefully  selected,  will  produce  the  quality  of 
sound  most  desired  in  that  particular  instrument. 
Thus,  down  to  the  time  of  David,  the  harp  had  been 
made  of  the  berosh,  or  cedar  wood.  But  in  Solomon's 
time,  it  was  found  that  the  cdmug  or  algum  wood  gave 
a  better  quality  of  sound,  and  all  the  harps  of  the  choir 
were  accordingly  made  of  it.  So  it  is  affirmed  that  the 
Cremona  viol  has  its  rank  of  estimation,  as  a  precious 
instrument,  from  the  singular  and  musically  soul-like 
quality  of  the  wood  selected  for  its  construction.  It  is 
also  found  that  the  different  woods,  in  friction  upon 
each  other,  scream  in  distinct  qualities  of  sound,  and  a 
key -board  instrument  has  been  constructed  on  this  prin 
ciple  of  friction,  that  discourses  in  the  woods,  by  vibra 
tions  that  answer  to  the  sentiments  of  souls.  Even  as 
that  most  wonderful  organ,  the  human  throat,  is  gifted 
with  a  power  to  utter  all  the  feeling  of  a  soul,  by  dis 
tinctions  of  sound,  so  there  is  a  throat  of  utterance  in 
all  created  substance,  voiced  to  serve  its  uses,  and  pre 
pared  by  some  mysterious  quality  of  sound,  to  be  its 
interpreter. 

It  can  not  therefore  be  said  that  music  is  a  human 


RELIGIOUS    MUSIC.  449 

creation,  and,  as  far  as  the  substances  of  the  world  are 
concerned,  a  mere  accident.  As  well  can  it  be  said 
that  man  creates  the  colors  of  the  prism,  and  that  they 
are  not  in  the  properties  of  the  light,  because  he  shapes 
the  prism  by  his  own  mechanical  art.  Or  if  still  we 
doubt,  if  it  seems  incredible  that  the  soul  of  music  is  in 
the  heart  of  all  created  being,  then  the  laws  of  harmony 
themselves  shall  answer,  one  string  vibrating  to  another, 
when  it  is  not  struck  itself,  and  uttering  its  voice  of 
concord  simply  because  the  concord  is  in  it  and  it  feels 
the  pulses  on  the  air,  to  which  it  can  not  be  silent. 
Nay,  the  solid  mountains  and  their  giant  masses  of  rock 
shall  answer ;  catching,  as  they  will,  the  bray  of  horns, 
or  the  stunning  blast  of  cannon,  rolling  it  across  from 
one  top  to  another  in  reverberating  pulses,  till  it  falls  into 
bars  of  musical  rhythm  and  chimes  and  cadences  of  sil 
ver  melody.  I  have  heard  some  fine  music,  as  men  are 
wont  to  speak,  the  play  of  orchestras,  the  anthems  of 
choirs,  the  voices  of  song  that  moved  admiring  nations. 
But  in  the  lofty  passes  of  the  Alps,  I  heard  a  music 
overhead  from  God's  cloudy  orchestra,  the  giant  peaks 
of  rock  and  ice,  curtained  in  by  the  driving  mist  and 
only  dimly  visible  athwart  the  sky  through  its  folds, 
such  as  mocks  all  sounds  our  lower  worlds  of  art  can 
ever  hope  to  raise.  I  stood  (excuse  the  simplicity)  call 
ing  to  them,  in  the  loudest  shouts  I  could  raise,  even 
till  my  power  was  spent,  and  listening  in  compulsory 
trance  to  their  reply.  I  heard  them  roll  it  up  through 
their  cloudy  worlds  of  snow,  sifting  out  the  harsh  quali 
ties  that  were  tearing  in  it  as  demon  screams  of  sin, 

88* 


450  RELIGIOUS    MUSIC. 

holding  on  upon  it  as  if  it  were  a  hymn  they  were 
fining  to  the  ear  of  the  great  Creator,  and  sending  it 
round  and  round  in  long  reduplications  of  sweetness, 
minute  after  minute,  till  finally  receding  and  rising,  it 
trembled,  as  it  were,  among  the  quick  gratulations  of 
angels,  and  fell  into  the  silence  of  the  pure  empyrean. 
I  had  never  any  conception  before  of  what  is  meant  by 
quality  in  sound.  There  was  more  power  upon  the 
soul,  in  one  of  those  simple  notes,  than  I  ever  expect  to 
feel  from  any  thing  called  music  below,  or  ever  can  feel 
till  I  hear  them  again  in  the  choirs  of  the  angelic  world. 
I  had  never  such  a  sense  of  purity,  or  of  what  a  simple 
sound  may  tell  of  purity,  by  its  own  pure  quality ;  and 
I  could  not  but  say,  0  my  God  teach  me  this !  Be  this 
in  me  forever !  And  I  can  truly  affirm  that  the  experi 
ence  of  that  hour  has  consciously  made  me  better  able 
to  think  of  God  ever  since — better  able  to  worship. 
All  other  sounds  are  gone,  the  sounds  of  yesterday, 
heard  in  the  silence  of  enchanted  multitudes,  are  gone ; 
but  that  is  with  me  still  and  I  hope  will  never  cease  to 
ring  in  my  spirit,  till  I  go  down  to  the  slumber  of  si 
lence  itself. 

What  I  here  say  may  probably  enough  seem  extrav 
agant.  That  such  a  power  of  music  dwells  in  the  rag 
ged  rocks  and  granite  masses  of  the  world  may  be  in 
conceivable.  And  yet  if  this  visible  creation  of  matter 
is  made  for  the  habitation  of  souls,  made  for  human 
hearts  as  well  as  for  human  understandings,  why  should 
not  the  language  of  the  heart  and  the  rhythm  of  the 
heart's  feeling  be  in  it  ? 


RELIGIOUS    MUSIC.  451 

I  am  a  little  apprehensive  that  in  these  illustrations  I 
may  have  seemed  to  some  of  you  to  be  so  much  occu 
pied  with  properties  of  matter,  as  to  be  leaving  the  do 
main  of  religion.  To  such  as  think  it  nothing  to  relig 
ion  that  God  has  made  the  world  for  it  and  hid  a  lan 
guage  in  all  fibres,  grains  and  masses  of  substance,  dis 
coursing  of  love  and  pure  feeling  and  adoring  joy,  it 
doubtless  will.  But  to  me  there  is  nothing  in  any  of 
the  arguments  for  God  from  things  visible,  that  seems 
to  prove  as  much  or  have  as  deep  a  meaning  as  this 
from  things  audible.  It  transforms  the  world  itself  into 
a  temple  of  worship  and  fills  it  with  voices  waiting  to 
utter  and  kindle  a  celestial  love  in  all  that  live. 

This  conviction,  I  think,  will  be  strengthened  as  we 
go  on  to  speak  of  the  second  topic  proposed,  viz.,  of 
those  distinctions  or  properties  of  sound,  by  which  it 
may  be  made  to  serve  most  effectively  the  purpose  of 
God  in  its  appointment  as  an  instrument  of  religion.  I 
say  the  purpose  of  God  in  its  appointment,  for  we  have 
it  by  a  double  appointment,  that  which  fills  the  mate- 
rial  creation  with  it  as  a  residence  or  temple  of  religion, 
and  that  which  makes  it,  by  express  direction,  an  ordi 
nance  of  worship  to  men.  How  carefully  this  part  of 
the  worship  was  ordered  in  the  temple  service  of  Israel, 
is  known  to  every  reader  of  the  ancient  scriptures ; 
how  exactly  also  the  choirs  of  singers  and  of  players  on 
instruments  were  arranged,  one  to  answer  to  another  in 
the  deep  wail  of  grief  or  penitence,  the  soft  response  of 
love,  the  lively  sweep  of  festive  gladness,  or  all  to  flow 


-±52  RELIGIOUS    MUSIC. 

together  in  choral  multitudes  of  praise,  that  might  even 
shake  the  rock  of  Zion  itself. 

And  this  divine  s-ervice  of  music  was  ordered  by  God 
Himself  through  His  own  prophet:  "And  he  set  the 
Levites  in  the  house  of  God,  with  cymbals  and  psalter 
ies  and  harps,  according  to  the  commandment  of  David, 
and  of  Gad,  the  king's  seer,  and  Nathan  the  prophet ; 
for  so  was  the  commandment  of  God  by  His  prophets. 
And  the  Levites  and  the  priests  praised  the  Lord,  day 
by  day,  singing  with  loud  instruments  unto  the  Lord." 

And  to  this  divine  ordinance  of  song  it  is  that  David 
calls,  when  he  says,  offering  to  his  nation  the  hymns 
he  has  written  for  their  anthems  of  praise :  "0  come 
let  us  sing  unto  the  Lord,  let  us  make  a  joyful  noise  to 
the  rock  of  our  salvation."  "  Sing  unto  the  Lord  with 
a  harp  and  the  voice  of  a  psalm.  With  trumpets  and 
sound  of  cornet,  make  a  joyful  noise  before  the  Lord 
the  king."  Or  perhaps  you  may  hear  him  alone  there 
in  the  temple,  weeping  out  his  shame  and  sorrow,  in 
tears  of  sound,  and  crying  to  his  harp,  "Have  mercy 
upon  me,  O  God!  according  to  thy  loving  kindness, 
according  unto  the  multitude  of  thy  tender  mercies,  blot 
out  my  transgressions." 

And  if  any  one  wishes  to  know  what  power  there 
may  be  in  music,  as  an  instrument  of  religion,  let  him 
ask  what  effect  the  songs  of  this  one  singer  have  had, 
melted  into  men's  hearts,  age  after  age,  by  music,  and 
made  in  that  manner  to  be  their  consecrated  and  cus 
tomary  expressions  of  worship.  Suppose,  instead,  ho 
had  written  a  treatise  of  theology  and  given  it  to  the 


RELIGIOUS    MUSIC.  453 

head  of  mankind ;  what  tenth  part  of  power  would  he 
thus  have  exerted  over  the  race?  And  you  will  re 
member  that  these  compositions  of  his  have  their  life  in 
the  principles  of  music.  Without  this  they  would  not 
have  been  preserved,  without  this  they  could  not  have 
been  set  as  they  are  in  the  depths  of  human  feeling, 
and,  what  is  more,  they  are  in  fact  musical  construc 
tions  ;  for  all  poetry  is  deep  in  the  rhythmic  power  of 
music.  Indeed,  you  may  see  as  you  read  these  compo 
sitions,  line  answering  to  line,  the  balancing  and  re 
sponding  of  choirs,  and  hear  their  confluence  in  the 
repetitions  of  the  chorus — nay,  you  may  almost  hear 
the  ring  of  the  cymbal,  the  blast  of  the  cornet  and  the 
wail  of  the  harp. 

Besides,  it  is  a  fact  that  the  inspirations  of  prophets 
and  seers,  and  probably  those  of  David  himself,  were 
connected  as  improvisings  with  religious  music.  Thus 
Elisha  said,  bring  me  a  minstrel.  And  it  came  to  pass, 
when  the  minstrel  played,  that  the  hand  of  the  Lord 
came  upon  him.  So  also  we  read  that  when  Saul  was 
seized  with  the  spirit  of  prophecy,  it  was  upon  meeting 
a  school  of  the  prophets  coming  down  a  hill  with  a 
psaltery  and  a  tabret  and  a  pipe  and  a  harp  before 
them — a  fact  in  which  we  see  that  prophetic  vision  it 
self,  in  the  schools  of  the  prophets,  was  a  state  of  higher 
consciousness,  opened  and  kindled  by  the  elevations  of 
religious  music.  Nor  is  this  any  thing  remarkable,  if 
we  recognize  the  fact  that  God  has  made  the  substances 
of  the  world  to  crystallize  and  grow  under  laws  of  mu 
sic  ;  so  that  strings  and  tubes  of  metal  and  wood  and 


454  RELIGIOUS    MUSIC. 

voices  opening  in  sound,  shall  speak  a  panharmonic 
language  for  whatever  feeling  struggles  in  the  depths 
of  the  human  bosom.  Indeed  what  human  being,  I 
may  almost  say,  though  it  were  better  to  say,  what  soul 
not  elosed  against  God  by  a  life  of  sin,  could  hear  the 
24th  Psalm  properly  delivered,  in  the  grand  choir  of 
the  temple  service,  without  beginning  to  feel  himself 
raised  above  himself,  as  if  some  power  of  prophecy  were 
in  him?  So  great,  so  mysteriously  powerful,  is  the 
sway  of  music  over  the  soul.  We  see  this  in  things  not 
religious.  Many  a  song  like  the  Marseilles  Hymn  has 
revolutionized  an  empire,  or  supported  even  for  ages 
the  nationality  of  a  people.  And  what  is  it  but  the 
martial  beat  of  music,  acting  on  the  yielding  and  thin 
element  of  common  air,  that  lifts  every  foot  of  an  army 
and  rolls  it  onward  with  the  precision  of  mechanism 
and  the  force  of  destiny  through  the  fiery  hail  of  death  ? 
Or,  what  is  it  now  that  gives  to  a  single  person,  a  wo 
man,  greater  power  of  impression  over  the  feeling  of 
mankind,  power  to  sway  more  deeply  the  sense  of 
whole  nations,  than  any  living  man  possesses,  whether 
•statesman  or  potentate,  however  distinguished  by  talent, 
however  absolute  in  dominion  ?  It  is  in  facts  like  these 
that  we  are  to  see  what  sway  God  designs  to  exert  in 
human  bosoms,  through  the  medium  of  this  mysterious 
force,  this  language  of  the  heart,  which  he  has  appointed 
and  set  in  a  connection  so  immediate  with  our  religions 
nature. 

But,  in  order  to  the  high  result  intended,  the  music 
of  religion  must  be  religious.     There  must  be  a  distinc- 


RELIGIOUS    MUSIC..  455 

tion  of  sounds.  As  this  language  is  given  for  the  heart, 
it  becomes  a  first  principle  that  it  must  be  of  the  heart, 
else  it  is  an  unknown  tongue.  And  so  true  is  this,  that 
nothing  can  really  fulfill  the  idea  of  religious  music, 
which  is  not  the  breathing  of  true  love  and  worship. 
Even  instruments  without  life  will  not  speak  the  true 
notes  of  power,  unless  the  touch  of  faith  is  on  them,j 
and  the  breath  of  holy  feeling  is  in  them — how  much 
less  the  voice  itself,  whose  very  qualities  of  sound  are 
inevitably  toned  by  the  secret  feeling  of  the  spirit. 

We  speak  of  music  as  a  science,  which  in  one  view 
it  is.  It  is  science  in  the  arrangement,  but  in  the  exe 
cution  more.  The  understanding  or  head  can  utter  no 
proper  music,  least  of  all  religious  music.  The  notes 
may  be  sounded  in  time  and  piteh  and  power,  and  }ret 
the  music  will  not  be  there.  It  might  as  well  be  im 
agined  that  a  man  can  be  an  eloquent  speaker,  because 
he  has  the  science  of  speaking  and  gesture  in  his  head, 
with  all  manner  of  facts,  images  and  arguments  at  com 
mand,  as  that  one  can  pour  out  the  true  inspirations  of 
worship  before  God,  because  he  knows  the  gamut  of 
music  and  the  fingering  of  its  instruments.  A  certain 
counterfeit  may  be  made  in  this  manner,  but  it  will  be 
a  counterfeit — an  uncertain  sound  that  has  not  the  true 
distinctions.  You  may  say,  it  is  well,  it  is  beautiful 
music,  but  for  some  reason  it  will  not  find  you.  ISTever 
will  it  be  the  proper  language  of  feeling  to  the  heart, 
till  the  spirit  of  adoration  is  in  it.  There  will  be  a  false 
quality  in  the  sounds,  something  which  says,  "this  is 
execution,"  some  token  of  ambition,  or  affectation,  or 


456  RELIGIOUS    MUSIC. 

eagerness  of  impression ;  the  solemnity  will  be  hollow, 
the  softness  will  be  flat,  the  loudness  a  strain  of  the 
flesh.  By  one  sign  or  another,  what  is  done  out  of 
mere  science  will  reveal  its  weakness  and  falsity.  The 
true  power  of  worship  will  be  felt  only  as  the  true  life 
of  worship  in  the  heart  flowrs  out  through  all  notes  and 
movements,  and  bathes  the  music  in  dews  of  heavenly 
moisture.  When  the  soul  is  simple  and  God  is  templed 
in  the  inmost  recesses  of  its  feeling,  then  is  there  a 
quality  in  the  voice  and  the  touch,  that  reveals  and 
communicates  the  inspired  joy  of  the  heart.  And  this 
is  power.  Even  the  most  simple  inartistic  perform 
ance,  full  of  love  to  God  and  the  unaffected  devotion 
of  worship,  will  carry  a  more  profound  impression,  one 
of  higher  sublimity,  than  the  highest  feats  of  execution 
and  the  finest  strains  of  amateur  propriety,  unkindled 
by  the  heavenly  fire. 

There  is  great  reason  to  suspect  that  the  office  of  a 
choir  and  of  choral  music  is  badly  conceived  in  our 
modern  assemblies  of  worship.  The  true  idea  of  Chris 
tian  music  involves  what  no  mere  drill  or  teaching  can 
reach ;  a  choral  consciousness,  inward  elevations,  rhyth 
mic  sweeps  of  feeling,  as  if  the  music  were  using  the 
choir  and  not  they  performing  the  music.  Poetry  can 
as  well  be  written  without  inspiration,  as  any  song  of 
the  heart's  faith  or  feeling  sung  by  the  will  and  the 
written  concert  of  the  book.  It  requires  something 
back  of  the  voice,  which  is  higher  in  quality,  a  feeling 
chastened,  softened,  raised,  purified,  glorified,  and  this 
beating  as  a  common  pulse,  a  common  inspiration,  shall 


RELIGIOUS    MUSIC.  457 

I  say,  in  the  whole  movement.  To  imagine  that  music 
of  any  kind  can  have  its  genuine  power,  without  the 
feeling  or  above  the  feeling,  is  absurd.  It  supposes 
that  music  may  be  good  as  a  lie — good  as  an  expression 
when  there  is  nothing  to  be  expressed.  Would  that 
a  choir  could  once  be  heard  again  on  earth,  like  that  of 
the  school  of  the  prophets ;  a  choir  that,  with  all  the 
advantages  of  modern  science,  and  the  more  perfect  in 
struments  of  modern  invention,  could  improvise,  in  its 
feeling,  the  subject  and  sentiment  of  its  song ;  pouring 
out  a  world's  anthem — voices  of  life  and  things  without 
life  giving  sound — to  Him  that  made  them  all  and  hid 
in  their  mysterious  mold  powers  of  harmony  to  feel  his 
touch  and  utter  his  praise.  0  the  deep  senses  of  God 
and  the  soul  and  the  soul's  yearnings  after  God,  that 
might  be  kindled  thus  and  in  awful  joy  expressed — 
kindled  also  as  certainly  as  they  are  expressed,  in  the 
listening  multitudes  who  hear. 

This,  at  least,  is  the  true  idea  of  Christian  music ;  it 
is  the  music  of  the  Spirit.  It  is  not  a  something  given 
secundem  artem,  a  touch  of  this  and  a  flourish  of  that,  or 
ari  indefinite  piping  and  harping,  which  no  one  can  tell 
whether  it  be  this  or  that,  but  it  is  the  voice  of  truth, 
love,  duty,  worship ;  a  discoursing  of  heaven  in  the 
language  of  the  heart.  It  streams  into  feeling  as  it 
streams  out  of  feeling,  and  is  to  the  spirit  a  holy  bap 
tism  of  sound. 

We  read  the  singular  history  of  David,  when  he 
lakes  his  harp  to  comfort  Saul  and  soothe  his  maddened 
brain,  and  perhaps  we  say  it  is  impossible.  But  we  do 

*  39 


458  RELIGIOUS    MUSIC. 

not  conceive  the  truth.  It  would  have  been  impossible, 
with  so  much  wood  and  so  many  strings,  if  that  were 
all,  to  accomplish  any  such  result.  The  best  overture, 
most  artistically  played,  would  have  been  powerless. 
But  David  is  not  here  as  an  amateur  player,  he  is  here 
in  a  consciousness  glorified  by  holy  trust,  playing  forth 
his  prayer  of  feeling,  and  his  love  is  in  the  wood  and 
the  strings,  and  the  spirit  of  God  is  sweeping  as  a  gale 
through  both  him  and  them.  Hence  the  power. 

In  drawing  this  subject  to  a  conclusion,  I  can  not 
forbear  to  say  a  few  words  in  regard  to  the  very  inti 
mate  connection  of  the  sense  of  music  and  the  cultiva 
tion  of  that  sense  with  the  highest  powers  of  genius  and 
literary  excellence.  The  talent  of  music,  though  in  one 
view  not  intellectual,  is  yet  in  another  even  the  more 
divinely  intelligent.  The  language  of  the  soul's  feeling, 
we  have  seen,  is  in  it,  and  nothing  had  ever  yet  any 
great  power  over  man  that  was  divorced  from  feeling. 
This  divine  principle  of  music  breaks  into  the  style  of 
every  good  writer,  every  powerful  speaker,  and  beats 
in  rhythmic  life  in  his  periods.  Even  if  he  is  rough 
and  fierce,  as  he  may  be  and  as  true  genius  often  is,  it 
will  yet  be  the  roughness  of  an  inspired  movement ;  a 
wizard  storm  of  sounds  that  rage  in  melody,  not  the 
dead  jolting  of  cadences  that  have  no  inner  life  back  of 
the  wind-force  that  utters  them.  The  talent  of  music 
is  the  possibility,  in  fact,  of  rhythm,  of  inspiration,  and 
of  all  poetic  life.  A  man  may  plod,  plot,  speculate  and 
sneer,  who  has  no  fibred  harp  of  music  hid  in  his 


RELIGIOUS    MUSIC.  459 

feeling;  he  may  be  a  qualified  atheist,  usurer,  dema 
gogue,  dogmatist  or  hangman ;  but  he  can  not  be  one 
that  stirs  men's  blood  divinely,  whether  in  song  or  in 
speech,  and  is  very  little  like  to  be  much  of  a  Christian. 

"  Is  there  a  heart  that  music  can  not  melt? 
Alas  !  how  rugged  is  that  heart  forlorn. 
Is  there  who  ne'er  those  mystic  transports  felt 
Of  solitude  and  melancholy  born  ? 
He  needs  not  woo  the  muse,  he  is  her  scorn. 
The  sophist  robe  of  cobweb  he  shall  twine, 
Mope  o'er  the  schoolman's  peevish  page,  or  mourn 
And  delve  for  life  in  mammon's  dirty  mine, 
Sneak  with  the  scoundrel  fox,  or  grunt  with  glutton  swine." 

In  these  rather  violent  terms  of  the  poet  Beattie  we 
have  nevertheless  a  very  certain  truth,  and  one  that, 
with  proper  allowance,  may  be  said  to  hold  general!}^. 
The  finest  fibre  of  soul  and  the  highest  inspiration  of 
feeling  can  be  formed  only  in  some  connection,  more  or 
less  intimate,  with  a  musical  susceptibility  and  nurture. 
Hence,  it  is  the  more  remarkable  that  our  universities 
make  so  little  of  music.  They  labor  at  the  rainbow 
and  neglect  the  deeper  mystery  of  the  musical  octave. 
They  teach  the  laws  of  acoustics,  but  the  laws  of  music, 
as  related  to  what  is  deepest  and  finest  in  the  soul's 
feeling,  they  do  not  attempt.  They  investigate  the 
crystallization  of  a  salt,  but  these  wondrous  and  myste 
rious  crystallizations  of  the  air,  in  the  notes  of  music, 
they  commonly  pass  by ;  greatly  to  the  loss,  it  seems 
to  me,  of  those  who  are  most  concerned  to  receive  what 
most  pertains  to  the  culture  of  the  imagination  and  the 
heart. 

But  I  must  not  occupy  too  much  time  with  points 


460  RELIGIOUS    MUSIC. 

that  are  separated  from  the  religious  interests  of  my 
subject.  Some  persons  have  a  very  decided  prejudice 
against  instruments  of  music,  and  even  fancy  that,  on 
that  account,  they  are  more  spiritual  and  more  strictly 
Christian  in  their  views  of  religion.  Such  a  prejudice 
is  greatly  hurtful  to  themselves,  because  it  takes  them 
off  in  a  kind  of  schism  from  this  part  of  the  worship, 
and  a  share  in  its  benefits.  Can  they  imagine  that 
they  are  borne  out  in  their  prejudice  by  the  Scripture? 
Or  have  they  never  read  the  Psalms  of  David  ?  What 
instrument  was  there  which  he  did  not  bring  into  the 
temple  and  command  to  open  its  voice  unto  God? 
Even  the  trumpets,  after  a  week's  battle,  must  come 
and  change  their  note  to  an  anthem  of  victory.  Imag 
ine  this  great  singer  of  Israel  and  the  vast  company  of 
the  Levites  hearing,  for  the  first  time,  in  the  temple  of 
God,  a  newly  invented  organ,  such  as  the  instrument 
now  perfected  by  modern  art,  such  as  the  beautiful  in 
strument  just  now  erected  for  your  society.  What 
emotions  roll  over  his  soul  and  the  souls  of  his  great 
choir  of  performers.  No  breath  will  blow !  No  hand 
will  strike  the  strings !  All  the  instruments  and  voices 
are  dumb!  He  rises,  when  the  experiment  is  over, 
and  goes  forth,  saying  in  himself,  "I  will  alter  now  my 
Psalms,  I  will  say  no  more  of  trumpets  and  cornets,  I 
will  call  no  more  for  psalteries  and  instruments  of  ten 
strings.  Profane  all  these  and  trivial !  But  this  is  the 
instrument  of  God !"  And  so,  in  fact,  it  now  is.  The 
grandest  of  all  instruments,  it  is,  as  it  should  be,  the  in 
strument  of  religion.  Profane  uses  can  not  handle  it. 


RELIGIOUS    MUSIC. 

It  will  not  go  to  the  battle,  nor  the  dance,  nor  the  sere 
nade  ;  for  it  is  the  holy  Nazarite  and  can  not  leave  the 
courts  of  the  Lord.  What  room  is  there  for  a  reasona 
ble  prejudice  against  such  an  instrument?  And  if  it 
be  true,  as  I  have  been  showing,  that  God  has  voiced 
the  dead  substances  of  the  world  to  sing  his  praise,  if 
he  has  made  the  round  earth  and  all  things  in  it  to  be 
an  organ  of  sound  about  us,  what  should  more  delight 
us  than  to  bring  into  concert  with  our  voices  an  instru 
ment  that  is  the  type  of  an  appointment  so  sublime  ? 
A  true  Christian  feeling,  it  seems  to  me,  will  ever  turn 
thus  to  things  without  life  giving  sound,  and  hail  their 
assistance  in  the  praise  of  God ;  rinding  half  the  sub 
limity  of  praise,  in  the  concert  of  the  inanimate  works 
of  the  Almighty  Creator.  It  will  even  cry  with  David, 
to  the  fire  and  the  hail,  snow  and  vapors,  stormy  wind 
fulfilling  His  word,  mountains  and  all  hills,  fruitful 
trees  and  all  cedars,  to  join  their  voice  with  his  and 
praise  the  Lord.  And  what  harm  will  it  be  if  they 
join  him  in  the  shape  of  an  organ? 

Let  me  also  suggest,  in  this  connection,  the  very 
great  importance  of  the  cultivation  of  religious  music. 
Every  family  should  be  trained  in  it ;  every  Sunday  or 
common  school  should  have  it  as  one  of  its  exercises. 
The  Moravians  have  it  as  a  kind  of  ordinance  of  grace 
for  the  children ;  not  without  reason,  for  the  powers  of 
feeling  and  imagination,  and  the  sense  of  spiritual  real 
ities,  are  developed  as  much  by  a  training  of  childhood 
in  religious  music,  as  by  any  other  means.  We  com 
plain  that  choirs  and  organs  take  the  music  to  them- 

39* 


462  RELIGIOUS    MUSIC. 

selves,  in  our  churches,  and  that  nothing  is  left  to  the 
people,  but  to  hear  their  undistinguishable  piping, 
which  no  one  else  can  join,  or  follow,  or  interpret. 
This  must  always  be  the  complaint,  till  the  congrega 
tions  themselves  have  exercise  enough  in  singing  to 
make  the  performance  theirs.  As  soon  as  they  are 
able  to  throw  in  masses  of  sound  that  are  not  barbarous 
but  Christian,  and  have  a  right  enjoyment  of  their  feel 
ing  in  it,  they  will  have  the  tunes  and  the  style  of  the 
exercise  in  their  own  way,  not  before.  Entering,  one 
day,  the  great  church  of  Jesus,  in  Rome,  when  all  the 
vast  area  of  the  pavement  was  covered  with  worshipers 
on  their  knees,  chanting  in  full  voice,  led  by  the  organ, 
their  confession  of  penitence  and  praise  to  God,  I  was 
impressed,  as  never  before,  with  the  essential  sublimity 
of  this  rite  of  worship,  and  I  could  not  but  wish  that 
our  people  were  trained  to  a  similar  exercise.  The 
more  sorrowful  is  it  that,  in  our  present  defect  of  cul 
ture,  there  are  so  many  voices  which  are  more  incapa 
ble  of  the  right  distinctions  of  sound,  than  things  with 
out  life,  and  which,  when  they  attempt  to  sing,  contrib 
ute  more  to  the  feeling  of  woe  than  of  praise. 

I  can  not  close  without  carrying  your  thoughts  for 
ward,  a  moment,  to  the  scenes  of  the  future  life.  It  is 
sometimes  made  a  question,  how  far  the  felicity  of  the 
blessed  hereafter  will  consist  in  this  particular  exercise 
of  worship.  I  allude  not  here  to  the  low-minded  and 
barbarous  sneers  of  infidels,  scoffing  at  the  Christian 
heaven  as  a  paradise  of  perpetual  psalm,  but  to  the  se 
rious  doubts  of  Christian  interpreters.  It  is  not  to  be 


RELIGIOUS    MUSIC.  463 

denied,  as  many  of  them  suggest,  that  our  current  rep 
resentations  of  this  subject  are  derived,  in  great  part, 
if  not  wholly,  from  the  Apocalypse  or  book  of  Kevela- 
tion.  Neither  can  it  be  denied  that  the  anthems  of 
praise  heard  in  heaven  by  the  seer  of  Patmos,  are  vis 
ional  anthems,  as  the  beasts  and  four  and  twenty  elders 
are  visional  beings — representations  above,  that  herald 
and  connect  with  scenes  of  history  to  come  on  earth. 
And  yet  they  encourage,  it  seems  to  me,  the  common 
impression,  even  if  they  do  not  reveal  what  is  actually 
transacted  in  the  world  of  the  glorified.  This,  at  least, 
we  know,  that  souls  are  organs  still  of  feeling,  and  if 
they  have  great  feeling  to  express,  it  will  be  strange  if 
they  have  not  the  language  of  feeling  too.  As  to  the 
sound  that  shall  be,  using  the  word  in  our  present 
earthly  sense,  we  of  course  know  nothing,  more  than  of 
the  body  that  shall  be.  And  yet  there  may  be  and  is 
like  to  be  a  finer  medium  of  sound,  a  more  spiritual  mu 
sic,  which  the  music  of  the  earth  only  images  or  repre 
sents,  just  as  there  is  to  be  a  finer  organ  of  body,  which 
our  grosser  body  represents.  And  then,  again,  what 
have  we  in  the  fact  that  a  law  of  music  penetrates  and 
tills  this  whole  empire  of  being,  making  the  known  uni 
verse  itself  an  organ  voiced  for  the  expression  of  the 
heart,  but  a  prophecy  given,  or  a  plain  inference,  that  as 
hearts  are  eternal,  so  all  realms  of  God  to  which  the 
blessed  go,  are  forever  to  thrill  in  ecstacies  of  sound. 
Besides,  what  is  the  joy  of  the  glorified  but  a  joy  of  so 
ciety ;  that  is,  of  feeling  expressed,  society  in  pure  and 
great  feeling,  immediate,  spontaneous,  universal ;  propa- 


464  RELIGIOUS    MUSIC. 

gated,  of  course,  by  some  fit  medium.  By  what  other, 
unless  by  voices  of  feeling  whose  speech  is  music,  voices 
angelically  tempered  by  the  inward  love  and  purity, 
flowing  into  choirs  of  harmony  and  improvised  an 
thems  that,  as  waves  of  sound,  are  but  the  ocean  beat 
and  swell  of  bosoms  conscious  of  God.  And  I  heard 
the  voice  of  a  great  multitude,  and  as  the  voice  of 
many  waters,  and  as  the  voice  of  mighty  thunderings, 
saying,  Alleluia,  for  the  Lord  God  omnipotent  reign- 
eth.  Many  waters — mighty  thunderings — chorus  of 
sea  and  air,  deep  and  wide  as  both !  in  the  clearness  of 
purity,  the  fullness  of  love,  the  tremendous  emphasis 
of  righteousness,  swearing  its  Amen  to  God  and  his 
judgments. 


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